promotion

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Anticipating Social Gone Wrong

June 22, 2010 in Online, Social by Anthony | No comments

For open, transparent companies with an amazing product and service experience, social media engagement can create huge benefits, but like most things in business there are risks.

Social media is just people being people online, but with better tools. Nothing has changed in their behaviour; it is their ability to be found and heard, and find others who think the same that is new and significant. Social media and the internet amplify the voices of those who publish content online, whether they love you or hate you.

Sometimes people will say things that businesses would prefer them not to. The internet has made it easier than ever to publish and spread this material. Sites like Facebook and WordPress make it easy to tap into an existing audience, or get indexed by Google and appear in brand searches. When a product or service has a branded social media presence or community, it can give them access to a highly relevant audience for their dissatisfaction, ire and angst, which can disrupt the business’ promotional activity and damage the brand.

It is hard to completely avoid this risk without losing the benefits from fostering conversation and building online communities. Here are a few ways a business can prepare to address these problems if or when they arise:

  • Anticipate the negative responses and plan on how and how not to respond
  • Make internal stakeholders aware of what can go wrong
  • Communicate response plans and processes internally with key stakeholders
  • Ensure that those with the authority to respond in negative situations are easily reached
  • Make staff aware of relevant policies

If no thought is given to what might go wrong, there is a greater risk of the company responding badly, and inflaming the situation further. Planning for problems that may arise before the fact ensures that the business’ response will most likely be timely, articulate and appropriate.

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Playing the Irrelevant Comparison Game

March 16, 2009 in Online, Social by Anthony | No comments

The statement:
“Walking -> Horse -> Boat -> Balloon -> Space Shuttle -> Segway -> Airbus… What’s next?”
is as logically consistent as:
“Email -> mIRC -> ICQ -> MSN -> Forums -> Myspace -> Facebook -> Twitter… What’s next?”.

In my example, each one can move people, but they all deal with different volumes, speeds, capabilities and efficiencies.  While the Space Shuttle might be ‘better’ than walking by a few degrees of magnitude, I won’t use one to get to the bus stop in the morning.  Should I wish to travel to Moreton Island, I would hardly use the advanced, cutting edge technology of a Segway to do so.  Despite its advantages, it may have some trouble with the water.

Comparing like with like is a good way to make a point.  Comparing two or more dissimilar objects or ideas can be just as effective, assuming that they are analogous.  As a technique of persuasion, it is used far more often than it really should.  The original author used a linear description of online modes of communication to demonstrate recent advances.  I suspect he failed to consider that most of the examples he chose cannot be compared in any meaningful way.  Open, closed, rich content, and text content channels were bundled together to create a linear progression of concurrent and dissimilar technologies.

However if you found that explanation of communication compelling, I would love the chance to explain, for a generous hourly consultancy fee, why bombarding Twitter users with adcopy from a business account is far better than putting resources into an SEO campaign.  After all, Twitter and SEO are both concerned with disseminating information online, and SEO is the older of the pair.

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Email’s post mail-out effect

November 19, 2008 in Advertising, Online by Anthony | No comments

For most of the commercial internet’s life, email has figured prominently as a major moneymaker for a lot of operators, both site owners and affiliates. Its use has continued despite the obstacles and bad reputation has been because it does make money.  Most of the time.

In a recent campaign using a third party list I observed something interesting. The mail-out was moderately successful in its first two days, generating a fair few hits and sales. What was novel was that the promotional code continued to be used over the course of the next two weeks, following a consistent sales and traffic curve over the course of the week. The traffic over this period took a sharp drop and roughly equalled the sales figures for volume. Over the post campaign period, almost everyone that visited the page, bought the product.

The creatives used in this campaign were all focused. They consistently communicated a single offer that was relevant to the list used, and from the creative to the single landing page and the cart, limited onsite leaks. While sales were limited to a small percentage of the people mailed, the value per customer was high.

The initial result, and the ongoing traffic and sales confirms that this campaign did deliver something of value to the customer. Like other good campaigns, this one was a success because it offered a targeted promotion that provides real value to the right customer.

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