Back around 2005 I had an office that when you walked through the main door you were in our production pit. It was usually fine because we were a production company and we didn’t get any walk in business.

One day though, a guy walks into our office and says loudly “Hey there! How ya doing?” We all get up and someone responds, “Hey! Good. You?”

We all look slightly confused as not one of us recognizes the person right off the bat.

He goes on “What are ya doing today? You busy?”

Me, “Fairly. A few things on the go…how about you?”  I’m being extremely friendly, wracking my brain as to who this person is. I’m starting to panic as he knows us and by the look on everyone’s faces we don’t know him! Is he a client?! Is he crew?!

Him-“I’m great! I was thinking about you folks the other day so I thought I would drop by.”

I’m fucked.  I really don’t remember this guy…not uncommon as our client/supplier list is well over 400 people but normally with everyone around we should have someone able to place him…I get the courage.  “I’m so sorry.  I can’t remember your name…”

Him- “No problem it’s Bob! So, the office looks great!”

Me- “Bob, sorry, but how do I know you?” I say smiling.

Bob- “Well, I don’t know if you do, but I have a great selection of books that I’m offering to select company…” I interrupt.  “Wait…You don’t know us?”

I’m not going to say what happened next…it just got stupid..

Funny story and it’s true.  But what’s my point?  There is a line that can’t be crossed during any point in the sales cycle but especially at the very beginning.  Don’t pretend that you know me.  Be friendly and welcoming but don’t fake a relationship!  For me, the second I loose trust within the cycle, I’m out of it and usually very peeved for someone wasting my time.

Now you’re thinking “Bob” is a pretty rare occurrence, but he isn’t.  We just need to see all the “Bob’s” out there for who and what they are.

A few days ago I got an email telling me about a local service.  The way the email was formatted it looked like I would know the person or the company.   I had to wrack my brain the same way as with Bob, only to discover, I didn’t know them! It was a bloody waste of time trying to figure out a connection because there wasn’t any.  It was Spam.  Spam, Spam, Spam!

One of the main rules in sales is you need to gain the targets trust. These people didn’t, in fact just the opposite.  They had no clue about it and it seems to be happening time and again with many other companies and their email marketing.  You get added to an email list, ad hock and without your knowing.

There are multiple reasons for having a person’s permission before adding them to an email list.  The most serious is, without permission, your email is Spam and believe it or not, most hosting companies have rules against sending Spam! I have actually seen hosting companies have their entire list of clients banned from sending emails to other hosting companies.  As such most hosting companies take Spam very seriously now.  Less serous legally, but more important for your sales, you loose your chance to have a conversation with your prospect if you are in the junk mail folder or worse, pissed them off!

Being friendly I sent the Spammer an email a day later explaining a little about email marketing and a couple of pointers as to how she might have been a little more successful in contacting me…….I don’t think she gave a rat’s ass… I believe she thinks, as most people who make the same mistake do, Email Marketing is suppose to be easy and people being pissed off about Spam is just part of the course.  It’s not!  Email Marketing can be a rewarding relationship, if you offer something of value.  If you do, chances are the recipient will let you keep emailing them giving you multiple chances at a sale.  If you offer no value and have not taken the time to make it of value then why would we keep letting you fill our in box and wasting our time?

On the surface Email Marketing  just looks like it would be getting and managing a mailing list.  It’s not. If your are going to put people on an email list, at least take the 20 seconds (if that) to send a personal email to them asking to do so…  Gain a little bit of trust first and then build on it!  It also allows them to say no and them saying no is not all bad.  It gives you information on the prospect (email is legit, signature bar, etc), starts a conversation and allows you to tailor the message better to that prospect and to others (they might have unique needs that you didn’t know about and didn’t tailor your introduction message to).

Let me help you just in case you are still not going to make the effort….

Dear (insert company here),

I have come across your company while researching possible clients for our services.  Every now and then we send out information that you might be interested in about (what you do/sell).  We promise that you will find it of use and interesting.  If you don’t want to be included on the mailing list, please let us know and you will not receive anymore emails from us.  Further after receiving any future emails, you can still decide at that time, not to receive anymore.

Thank you for your time and hope we can be of service to you in the future,

(your name here..YOUR REAL NAME!)

Please feel free to cut and paste, but remember to replace (insert company here) and (your name here) with the appropriate information….nothing says stupid like getting emails with it still there…and I do get them!

Anyone remember the old days of Fax spam? …….. Ok, there used to a machine that, when connected up to a regular wired phone line, would transmit black and white images to another Fax somewhere else. Some companies would hire a “Fax marketing company” to send out Spam Ads to any and every fax number in a select area.  It was all about “the list”.  Cheep flights, cheap cruises, cleaning, Fax and copy repair, you name it, it would just appear on your fax machine eating up your toner, paper and God forbid…your thermal paper roll!

Well one day some bright fellow thought of a way to get even.  They would find out the advertisers business Fax number and send them a looped black page, called a “black fax”…ok…A what? A black fax was exactly what it sounds like.  You would tape four pieces of black paper together with a strip of exposed tape at the top so you could join the bottom piece into a roll.  You would dial the offending number, hit send on the fax and as the paper starts feeding through you would take the leading edge of the paper that just went through the Fax scanner and attach it to the last edge so you have an endless loop of black. Unless the person on the other end is paying attention to their Fax, they would end up with no toner or paper or worse….AN EMPTY THERMAL PAPER ROLL!

To the Fax marketing company and their clients, the “list” was everything, until they got feed back (pay back?) from the folks who they pissed off.  Don’t let your email marketing be like Fax Spam! You have to see your prospects as more than a list.  You have to earn trust and the first step in email marketing is to do that!

If anyone discovers a “black fax” trick for spam email, please let me know.  Also, I always wondered whether “Bob’s” tactic worked well in large offices where there was a certain amount of anonymity….I wonder what he is doing now?

Scott Westerlaken

With over 25 years of award winning experience in marketing, television commercials, film, video, communications, web, radio, print, and events, Scott has the ability to maintain focus on the big picture and offer a wide range of solutions appropriate to the clients message and budget. He has been recognized with dozens of awards in business, communications, and filmmaking from around the world. For the client, this means a truly unique balance of hands on technical knowledge and high level strategic experience that always leads to unique and creative solutions.

Well even though we’re not Canadians fans over here at PHI….(sorry didn’t hear you Al) I thought I would give some credit to Carey Price and his pink pads.

Read more: Montreal Canadiens’ Carey Price will be wearing pink for breast cancer awareness month

I would love to see more of that in the NHL and all pro sports for that matter.  In fact it would have been better to see something like Breast Cancer Pink instead of the logos on the NHL preseason jersey’s… Hey Marketing Folks (YA, YOU TOO NHL & GARY BETTMAN!), there’s your idea for next year!  Instead of your logo, sponsor an NPO for the shirt space!!!!  In fact….in the preseason, why not have the loosing teams have to donate time to the winning teams charity of choice?  No charge for that idea.

Carey’s gesture reminded me of some work we did for another simular cause BCANS….So I dug though our archives and fell in love with the stories all over again a year later… here are a couple of them in celabration of what Carey is doing….Keep it up Carey!

For stories or to find out more about BCANS visit http://bcans.ca/

Scott Westerlaken

With over 25 years of award winning experience in marketing, television commercials, film, video, communications, web, radio, print, and events, Scott has the ability to maintain focus on the big picture and offer a wide range of solutions appropriate to the clients message and budget. He has been recognized with dozens of awards in business, communications, and filmmaking from around the world. For the client, this means a truly unique balance of hands on technical knowledge and high level strategic experience that always leads to unique and creative solutions.

Yes, we all know and love Mad Men. But the version of the ad industry that Mad Men presents is long gone. We no longer smoke in the office, most of us don’t have a bar next to our desk, we aren’t all having sex with our non-existent secretaries and we don’t grab 15% commission of everything that moves. No, we don’t do business like they did in Don Draper’s heyday… unless of course the agency you work for or own is planning to become a “used to was” in the very near future.

The new world of advertising is dominated by those who have never lost sight of the simple premise that their very existence is tied to their ability to be their clients eyes and ears on the street and… have found a way to bring them closer to their customers. You can’t do that by sitting around the boardroom sipping single malt or by rushing home the minute the 5 pm bell rings.

The advent of Direct Marketing and the increasing use of data changed our basic understanding of the business in the eighties. But social media appears to be the biggest shift in how we communicate since Gutenburg invented moveable type printing.

Here are a few stats of interest.

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers

• 96% of them have joined a social network

• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year have met via social media

• Facebook added 100 million users in 9 months

• If Facebook would be a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest

• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees

• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?

• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world

• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs.

• 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily.

If these stats don’t make you stop and think, you should quit your ad job and get a job driving a cab.

The results are in and they are clearly telling us that we can no longer move client product and services based on gut instinct, clever burn lines or TV Spots and Print Ads that are all about our perception of features and benefits. Consumers are much too smart to buy that stuff… and they have the tools at their disposal to get even smarter.

That is not to say TV spots don’t have a place in an overall plan. But the recognition that TV viewing is fragmented and consumers are consuming more time than ever online is a prerequisite for success in today’s marketplace.

Imagine, a meeting between David Ogilvy and Mark Zuckerberg and the discussion that would result.  I think you might be surprised to hear Ogilvy say “Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.” That statement I think would make Zuckerberg’s head move like a Bobble Head toy in the rear window of Ogilvy’s Mercedes. Was Ogilvy ahead of his time or were we just not hearing the things that Zuckerberg and others appear to know intuitively?

On that note let’s sum up. If you want to influence consumers you must be part of the conversation they are having. Your challenge is to heighten you listening skills so you understand “the mores of society” and given an opportunity finding something of moment to say. And by that I don’t mean “While Quantities Last”

So whadda ya think…. is social media the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

Al Graham is a veteran of the advertising wars who once smoked like Mad Men’s Don Draper. He is also a veteran of many social conflict wars and has been actively involved in protesting dumps, airports, expressways and urban sprawl.

There were a few surprise ads on the reel I had not seen and that blew me away, some that didn’t grab me and some that just left me shaking my head wondering why they rated so high.

The highlight 60 sec. TV spot for me was from Volkswagen. They received a gold TV win for “Dog-Fish”. I loved it on many different levels. The story telling was really well done, the acting was good, but the Visual Effects were fantastic.

Surprisingly, it didn’t win Gold for Visual Effects, that went to Evian “Rollerbabies”, which I find the close up’s of the babies looked really fake.

Truthfully the Evian ad is cute the first time you watch it then it gets more annoying each time around.

The other ad that made me go hmmm was the Nokia N96 gold winning ad “Bruce Lee-ping pong”

Interesting scene, got my attention…but really a Gold for telecommunications? It had me really wanting to see more “Bruce Lee” doing his thing rather than the two folks he was playing….Yet more Hmmmm..

There were some beautiful animation ads this year in the silver category. The Scrabble campaign “Sumo”, “Hula” and “Yoga”. All three also won a silver for original music. I like the ads but personally wonder how well they did for brand and sales.

Bakers Biscuits “Precious Biscuits” spot (silver for animation) was beautiful, but again, I hope it did something for the brand….

Another disappointment, but for different reasons was the Silver winner for Direction, Tampax, “Zack Johnson”. I really think it deserved a gold. The story telling and characters were great.

In a reverse of what the trend has been for years, the Public Service winners over all were a little week. I did like the Gold winner ECPCAT “Child Pornography”, but the silver winners Shelter, “House of cards” , Women’s Aid “Cut” and Anti-Knife Crime (OMG, really?) “Cribs” seemed weak to me.

What grabbed my attention this year was the “New” category. A “New” category?! “Entries for The NEW Category are for work that merges the power of an original idea with a relevant compelling execution. Emotionally inspirational, imaginative work, effectively creating new dialogues, creating new spaces of interaction, altering perceptions, setting new benchmarks that invite and reward at every level of engagement.”

All the winners were fantastic in execution. You got to love clients that are willing to reach out a little…The Grand LIA went to Fiat eco: Drive interesting but I loved a few others more.

“The best job in the world” by Tourism Australia really blew me away when I first heard about it and it still does.

Also the AC/DC Black Ice idea was interesting, especially the Excel spread sheet video…yup, you have to see it to believe it.

The Excel sheet can be downloaded here: http://www.acdcrocks.com/excel/

This category gave me hope that marketers are moving towards an evolution in advertising…when viewers get to a point that they don’t see advertising as advertising…..

All the winners can be found on the LIAA website, http://2009.liaentries.com/winners/ and it’s well worth a look through.  What have presented is just a very small snippet. Would love to hear back on what you liked out of the show!

SW

Scott Westerlaken

With over 25 years of award winning experience in marketing, television commercials, film, video, communications, web, radio, print, and events, Scott has the ability to maintain focus on the big picture and offer a wide range of solutions appropriate to the clients message and budget. He has been recognized with dozens of awards in business, communications, and filmmaking from around the world. For the client, this means a truly unique balance of hands on technical knowledge and high level strategic experience that always leads to unique and creative solutions.

Scott Westerlaken

I spy on my competition.  I’m very open about it.  I do it ethically by monitoring their activity on the web (as I have written about before, http://www.phigroup.ca/blog/2010/01/narcissism-or-market-research/).  It’s all above board and such.  I consider my competition’s internet conversations to be the same as them having a conversation in a public place…they should expect to be over heard.
Recently I was sent an unsolicited email from someone who was using an automated email marketing “solution” and a whole bunch of issues on privacy and expectations came flooding back to me.  The email marketing “solution” in question was one I had used years earlier and truthfully kind of bothered me with all the info they collected from the recipient who opens the email. At the time I decided that it was not for “me” as I felt my clients would be upset if they ever found out.

This leads me to my biggest email pet peeves. If I don’t know you, don’t send me a blanket email asking for money for your son or daughter’s band trip to Europe.  Don’t put my email on a mailing list just because we connected on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter!  Finally, my BIGGEST….DON’T monitor what emails I did read, forward and/or the time I spent on something you sent me that I might have found interesting enough to read.  It’s MY email once I get it and if you want to know what I do with it, ask me.  With a lot of the email marketing programs this is exactly what they do, but they don’t ask!  They report back a bunch of stat’s (they vary from program to program) about who opened, blocked, forwarded (and to whom, where it starts again), how long they spent with the email open, how many times they opened it, the operating system, email program, and more.  ALL without the reader’s acceptance to share that info.  Further, they don’t even knowing that it’s happening.

I was having one of “those” days I and so opted out and finally put the keyword block on for the offending “solution”.  I tweeted this and the reaction (or lack there of) was kind of surprising.  Folks liked the offender and marketing solution they offered!  They liked being able to add people without an “opt in”!  They didn’t really care about all the data that was sent without the reader knowing or allowing.  I was blown away!  Aren’t we the same folks that get’s peeved when Facebook uses our data and info without our knowledge?!

A friend emailed about why I took the actions I did as they were about to recommend the same “solution” to their client.   I explained my feelings on “opt in” and having people know exactly what info they are giving to someone else, rather than not telling or hiding it.  They are reconsidering now…I felt a little better about her “reconsideration” though I know it’s probably too tempting for the client…and if they don’t do it their competition will.

So, here I am.  Feeling like a lone crusader once again… Feeling that if we knew “all” the info that was being collected with those fancy HTML emails (and I know I don’t know what the “all” is) we would be darn upset!  Maybe not…. I know my solution for now is to block certain company keywords…maybe next it will be HTML…

SW

With over 25 years of award winning experience in marketing, television commercials, film, video, communications, web, radio, print, and events, Scott has the ability to maintain focus on the big picture and offer a wide range of solutions appropriate to the clients message and budget. He has been recognized with dozens of awards in business, communications, and filmmaking from around the world. For the client, this means a truly unique balance of hands on technical knowledge and high level strategic experience that always leads to unique and creative solutions.

The saying goes, “If you aren’t online in 2010 you don’t exist.”

Everyday consumers search the web for information on companies and a variety of products. Ranging from trying to find a cheap flight to figuring out where the closest flower shop is. Consumers are relying on the web to be the one place where they can find whatever they want – whenever they want. If a consumer searches your organization’s name, products, brand or services and your company doesn’t show up; to that consumer – you don’t exist.

There are millions upon millions of people who use Social Networking sites on a daily basis. Recently, Social Networking has surpassed pornography as being the most popular activity on the web. Ranging from Facebook to Twitter – your organization cannot afford to miss such an opportunity to be relevant.

The Power of Branding

Like an onion the web has many, many different layers. Your branding strategy should be similar. You need to take advantage of the various layers the web has to offer your company in strengthening its brand. While a consistent brand is most important – A continuous branding strategy is equally essential.

The web allows you to utilize not only your website for branding, but now has many other platforms that can help strengthen your brand. With a solid branding strategy you can utilize twitter, blogging, Facebook, tumblr and many other tools to make your brand not only relevant but also powerful.

The Power of Customer Feedback

A lot of companies are afraid to hear what customers are saying about them, but that’s not how you should do business. This is where you should set yourself apart from those companies and take the time to show your customers that you care.

Within seconds of searching social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook you can track what people are saying about your company in real-time. This is an opportunity for companies who are looking for ways to improve their customer service or even fix some problems that you hadn’t noticed before.

Picture this, someone is on Twitter and they tweet how bad they’re craving  pizza. Then a few minutes later Pizza Hut sends them a message saying:

“Hey, I saw your tweet about how you were craving pizza! Message me your e-mail and I’ll send you a 25% off coupon”

Not only would this person be blown away by the fact that Pizza Hut went above and beyond to serve them. They will most definitely pass this story along to their friends, followers and colleagues to let them know about this service.

The Power of Traffic

Recently Facebook surpassed Google’s incredible ability to drive traffic to key websites. This shows us the power of Social Networking and the influence it has over web traffic. You can no longer only rely on Search Engine Optimization for traffic – And you definitely can’t put all of your eggs in the Adwords basket. Instead you must work with these methods and Social Media to drive traffic to your website.

The Power of Returns

A lot of people question whether or not you can find a legitimate return on investment from all of this social media stuff. Well, to put it simply; you can. Depending on the industry you are in, you can track the influence the web has had on your business in a variety of ways.

Using web promotions and coupons you can easily track what sales came directly from your online efforts. If originally your sales were increasing monthly by 5% and then suddenly you started to implement this strategy and sales shot up by 50% – It’s pretty obvious where the jump came from.

Promotions are not the only way to track how effective your social media efforts are. Using innovative software, you can track how often people are mentioning you compared to the days you spent without a solid online presence. Or the increase in web traffic you generate after beginning to use a social media platform.

Ross

Ross Simonds

Ross Simmonds, is the Co-Founder of Altego Marketing Solutions an Interactive Marketing & Experience Design firm that helps small/medium sized businesses implement profitable marketing strategies using the web and branding

If you’re interested in discussing how you can improve your companies online presence contact PHI or Ross at Ross@ReachDontPreach.com.

There have been many different approaches to increase your presence on the web but we now pretty much settle on two common approaches to increasing website traffic and the both stem from increasing your Search Engine Positioning. The two Search Engine Marketing (SEM) models are Organic or Organic with a price – Pay-Per-Click (PPC) also know as Keyword Search.

ORGANIC

Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of optimizing a website by modifying it’s design, technology, content, or structure in an effort to make that site rank higher with a particular search keyword and category. This is a multi-step process that includes identifying keywords for your site, optimizing the individual pages for the search engines, and building the external profile to your site to link to.

We emphasize, organic SEO takes time and maintenance. Rich Media content will drive faster results as the king of search engines, Google loves rich media content. The time to build up a site’s internal and external profile and find other sites to link to help’s building the site’s external profile.

The typical steps to launch an optimizing site with an organic SEO:

• Business Assessment
• Keyword “Brainstorming”
• Keyword Analysis
• Keyword Selection
• Matching Search Terms to Content (internal profile)
• SEO Copywriting or revising of site content (internal profile)
• Crawlability and Site Navigation (internal profile)
• Optimizing Web Pages (internal profile)
• Link Building (external profile)
• Submitting (external profile)
• Management

The advantage is it is free, also a disadvantage as a business owner does not usually have the staff or knowledge to support the optimization, so free is a relative word, maybe free once the site is optimized but will still need to be maintained.

The disadvantage is it takes more time than PPC and there is no guarantees your website will move up in the search engine ranking, and if it does how do you keep it there.

PPC

So we come to another option, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), a performance based optimization. It is fundamentally quite different than organic optimization. It starts out the same (with keyword analysis) but involves spending money for eye balls, paying for your position on a search engine (Google and Bing). You only pay for each click (if only was such a small word) and the beauty of it is your account is automatically subtracted.  There also bidding wars for certain terms that are highly searched.

PPC offers one thing that everybody likes; instant recognition. The downside to PPC is that it costs money and that cost is directly proportional to the amount of traffic you see coming to your site. This is an easy way to increase traffic but not necessarily a qualified or quantified way to gauge traffic.

Here are the steps that a typical PPC campaign includes:

• Business Assessment
• Keyword Selection
• Developing a Budget
• Develop Landing Pages
• Develop Ad Copy and Headlines
• Establish Keyword Bids
• Management

We know the advantages, instant recognition, easy to monitor, can be very effective if you are selling a product with a high profit margin.  The obvious disadvantage is the costs, monitoring and managing is critical, and in the long run is not as cost effective as organic.

Content Media’s “ORGANIC” marketing

The Organic option, a blend between Organic and PPC. We believe that a well constructed, technology based website will deliver the best organic solution.  The website needs lots of rich media elements not only to increase your SEO but also to engage your visitor, consumer or business.  The PPC part of the solution keeps you top of mind, gives you brand position in a category and for the most part keeps you honest with search results.

The typical steps to launch an organic/PPC blend campaign are:

• Business Assessment
• Website Marketing Assessment
• Keyword “Brainstorming”
• Keyword Analysis
• Keyword Selection
• Matching Search Terms to Content (internal profile)
• SEO Copywriting or revising of site content (internal profile)
• Crawlability and Site Navigation (internal profile)
• Creative development and implementation of Rich Media
• Optimizing Web Pages (internal profile)
• Link Building (external profile)
• Submitting (external profile)
• Developing a Budget
• Develop Landing Pages
• Develop Creative Words
• Establish Keyword Bids
• Overall Management
• Develop/Implement Social Marketing Channels

Tony Sasso

Tony Sasso is a recognized Brand/Direct Marketer with over 25 years of marketing experience and has spent the last 10 years learning about the internet and continues too.  Content Media is PHI’s affiliate media company in Toronto.  Content Media builds solutions that deliver results on the internet.

You can reach Tony through PHI or at tonysasso@bell.net or by phone at 416-671-4436.

There is a strong move to the internet in the USA, not only how the client uses it, but the way Realtors are (or in some cases not) using it!  Just as the cell phone and email revolutionized the way Realtors did business, the internet is also changing the way business is conducted and won!

According to two different studies conducted in the USA, 80 to 95% of sellers and buyers are finding and researching their broker and agent on the internet before engaging their services.  If your web page hasn’t been optimized and isn’t regularly updated, then this should scare you into action!

The move to Facebook pages and Twitter is growing, but experienced brokers are still ignoring it’s potential to drive both sales and client acquisition.  Furthermore, Twitter searches conducted by home buyers or sellers is a growing practice and if you’re not monitoring your brand (or real estate in general) in this space, then you’re missing out!

Photo tours are still dominant in real estate, but a growing use of video to improve the client’s experience, the Realtor’s brand perception and the listing’s visibility is substantial.  The move to video tours has increased by up to 96% from 2008, with the top reason being home sellers love not having to disrupt their lives for numerous showings.  Further to this is the increase in search weight, caused by the rich media on the brokers’ site, while also providing a more engaging experience for home buyers.  Video is being used as a marketing tool to elevate the agent or broker’s brand perception, in addition to providing property-specific details.  A good example (if we do say ourselves) are the videos we did for Polycorp.

What does this all mean? Real estate brokers should be embracing the new tools available to them and encouraging agents to participate in social media.  It’s no longer good enough to have a static brochure on the website.  A broker’s site needs to be optimized for search, it should also be dynamic and engaging. Otherwise, the site simply gets lost in the search traffic maze.  And the best part is: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and most “social media” initiatives cost very little to implement and video content can be produced for as low as $50.

There are some pitfalls that real estate professionals need to keep in mind, however.  Everything you put out there must relate back to your brand. Just like you would not send out a newsletter that was poorly written and badly laid out, the same holds true for your social media and video efforts.  If you are setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts, they need to be branded and even more importantly, full of useful information for your clients that is updated regularly.  With video tours, also keep in mind that you need to keep it branded.  Think of video in the same way you would a brochure.  It all reflects on “how the client will view doing business with you”.  There is no shame in asking for help in these areas…your expertise is in the real estate business!

I can’t imagine a Realtor in this day and age saying they don’t have a cell phone, or email.  It’s fundamental to the way business is done today.  The same will be said about Facebook, Twitter, and websites with rich content in the next year or two!  We have been working on a few innovative ideas for clients and how they can use Facebook, Twitter and video to increase sales, client appeal and branding.  I would love to see some great examples of how others are also doing so, whether in real estate or not!

SW

Scott Westerlaken

Scott Westerlaken

With over 25 years of award winning experience in marketing, television commercials, film, video, communications, web, radio, print, and events, Scott has the ability to maintain focus on the big picture and offer a wide range of solutions appropriate to the clients message and budget. He has been recognized with dozens of awards in business, communications, and filmmaking from around the world. For the client, this means a truly unique balance of hands on technical knowledge and high level strategic experience that always leads to unique and creative solutions.

Scott Westerlaken

Over the last few months I was introduced to a great but addictive tool.  Google Alerts.  Imagine, if you will, you had a personal researcher that gave you up to the minute web status reports on any subject you wanted. Like…um…well yourself and your company.  Ok..I must admit I get a kick about seeing where my name appears but it also serves other purposes. It can give you immediate feed back on posting visibility, news reports and business opportunities. I have one “Alert” for “web video” (note you apply the search parameters as you would with a regular Google search, see end of article for more tips) that regularly gives me greater insights into industry developments and twitter/linkedin material to spread.

To get going, visit www.google.com/alerts.  Sign in or setup an account if you do not already have one (takes a couple minutes at most).  Set up your search words and how often you want your update (immediate or daily) and whether you want to be notified by email or RSS.  Simple, but addictive, so be careful!

Quick briefing on “Search Modifiers”

Looking for an explicit phrase? Use the words within quotation marks, like “phi group”.

To exclude words use the hyphen(minus) symbol. “video production”-wedding

To include similar words try the little used  “~” (known as the tilde, finally found a use for that key).  “video production”~producer

And…(yes Margaret I am starting a sentence with “and”) finally the mathematicians favorite modifier “OR”.  Video production OR producer for example.

There are others, such as site specific and file type searches but this is enough to get you going.

Would love to hear some other uses and stories for Google Alerts.

SW

According to the experts, social marketing was “born” as a discipline in the 1970s, when a few smart people realized that the same marketing principles that were being used to sell products to consumers could be used to “sell” ideas, attitudes and behaviors. Believe it or not I was around in the 1970s… and I thought Social Marketing was really all about Tupperware parties or the traditional get together in the back of the local hardware store around the hot-stove or… in the tents set up at carnivals – or was that more about Social Disease? Today the techniques and tactics have changed (inbound marketing, google search, twitter, blogs… yadda, yadda, yadda) but weren’t all the aforementioned also being used to “sell” ideas, change attitudes and behaviors?

The experts also claim that social marketing differs from other areas of marketing only with respect to the objectives of the marketer. Social marketing, according to these same experts, seeks to influence social behaviors, not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and society in general. Say What?  While I doubt major brands are investing millions in social marketing for the benefit of general society, I think it is fair to say that some of those involved in more altruistic endeavours are using it to successfully reach people who share their views and attitudes.

In any event, here’s a little Social Marketing story from my less than expert communications past. It starts when… I was retained by an organization that had a need to communicate with a major group of influencers and decision makers about a product that was subjected to considerable adverse pressure.

Before we go any further, let’s be sure you get my drift…. the organization was involved in the manufacture of tobacco products; the so-called influencers and decision makers were parliamentarians of all political stripes. And, before you diss me getting in bed with Big Bad Tobacco and being naive enough to believe that the average parliamentarian has much influence on anything, remember the point of this missive is to examine the virtues of the new marketing craze called “Social Marketing.”

So… here’s what we did to help Big Bad Tobacco deal with the adverse pressures to which they were being subjected to by the nasty guys in government.  We set out to form a citizens group comprised of smokers who believed their rights were being trampled by an overreaching government. This gathering of like-minded individuals that was thirsting for, as Rodney Dangerfield would say, “a little respect” was encouraged to come together under the mychoice.ca banner. As the name implies…  their choice was to smoke wherever and whenever they wanted to.  And what better way to express themselves and get the politician’s attention than to have a presence on the net? Oh yeah, there was an office, but that was only used to distribute posters, bar coasters and other collateral materials designed to promote the individual’s right to enjoy their dastardly smoking habit even in public places. Traditional advertising tactics (newspaper ads and radio commercials) were employed to drive people to mychoice.ca. And guess what? It worked! Score one for traditional advertising!

All of a sudden 45,000 enraged smokers came out of the nicotine stained woodwork ready to do battle with anyone preventing them from enjoying a smoke. Protest demonstrations were planned and executed in roadhouses all around rural Canada… roadhouses being an obvious venue because beer and smokes are tied at the hip. Individual letters of protest were dispatched (all following a guideline written by writers mychoice employed} and…. the politicians were inundated. All right, maybe not inundated, but they did get a few letters.

OK so what? you ask. How did this so-called Social Marketing adventure work out? Did it “sell” ideas, change attitudes and/or behaviors?

In order to answer that we need to remember what the experts say social marketing was designed to do…. “seek to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer.”  So it did work because all the like-minded members of mychoice suddenly had a forum wherein they could become an important part of a social marketing program designed to get them some respect.  Remember, this was a program designed on the surface to benefit smokers, enabling them to purchase consumer tobacco products without impunity. However, if helped smokers gain a little respect, there is no doubt that the major benefits would accrue to tobacco farmers, tobacco manufacturers and even tobacco smugglers everywhere. Because God knows… there is less profit in Soya Beans than there is in Virginia Tobacco; and it costs a fortune to package smokes in warning laden packs that are hidden behind closed shelf doors and to find and exploit new channels of communication and distribution that were less regulated.

Yeah, but what was the “Sell” benefit? you ask. Did more people rush to the local Variety store to buy smokes? Well no… smoking actually decreased.

Did those decision makers in Ottawa reduce the onerous taxes on tobacco? No… and by not reducing taxes they made a conscious decision to help the bootleg tobacco industry thrive. Did Provincial and Municipal governments lift their smoking bans? Again no.  Did all those bar owners who had invested in smoke reduction equipment get reimbursed for their government dictated expenses? Naw. So what was the real benefit?

I guess the tobacco industry got some benefit in that they were able to find a new channel to engage addicted smokers and to inform them that they still had the right to purchase smokes (legally or otherwise), And to prove to at least 45,000 registered smokers that they deserved respect, as in r e s p e c t – I can hear Aretha now, can’t you? Respect, no matter the negative social cost in health and health care, personal dollars, not to mention the obnoxious dry cleaning costs required to remove the stench of tobacco smoke from that tux borrowed from a brother-in-law.  ‘So I guess, depending on your smoking preferences, the simple answer is… Yes & No.

There you have it – my myopic view of the potential impacts of Social Marketing. Whether this little story answered all you questions about Social Marketing or not, you could always use the paper you didn’t print it out on to roll some “good” smoke (come on, you know what I mean) and light up, sit back, inhale and hold, exhale slowly, smile… and whimsically contemplate how you too can employ this new Social Marketing thingee.

From People or Planes 1974 Gordon Willson

Al

Al Graham is a veteran of the advertising wars who once smoked like Mad Men’s Don Draper. He is also a veteran of many social conflict wars and has been actively involved in protesting dumps, airports, expressways and urban sprawl.