This Week’s Top Tweeted Guerrilla and Ambient Marketing Pictures
Guerrilla Marketing as Jay Levinson and I discussed in our book Guerrilla Social Media is defined as achieving conventional marketing goals by unconventional means. Ambient marketing is a spin-off of Guerrilla Marketing – you may spend the same dollars but it involves morphing the media and blending the environment and community blurring the lines between ad and viewer making them active participants in in the marketing activity. A couple of these photos may offend… but remember guerrilla marketing focuses on human emotions and depends upon them to take action.
7 Steps to Building a Social Business
I have been a little too busy over the past 3 months. 20 seminars and training sessions, a half-dozen new clients for our social media agency and of course family time! I have a number of new podcasts in the que for you over the next 60 days but I thought I would re-ignite my blogging efforts by sharing a new video I just posted called “7 Steps to building a Social Business.” Also you can also check out our Socialized! Agency Blog for new and breaking news on the social media space. Enjoy!
Also Consider Gannon University Online MBA Programs as another way to build success in the business world. Before you get social a business foundation really helps.
Ford Dealer Social Media Success Story – Lebanon Ford Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Social Media Podcast: Ford dealers across North America are executing some amazing social media strategies. While catching up on my reading and best-practices I stumbled across a great case study on how Lebanon Ford (Ohio) has had some incredible success. They don’t just have a great social media team, they have built a truly social culture in their dealership that has resulted in a 260% year-on-year increase in Internet sales of vehicles and a significant increase in walk-ins and revenues overall.
I asked Zack Bello, Marketing and Communications Manager at Lebanon Ford to share with me how they have built such a great social enterprise that drives real business results using social media.
Quick Links:
10 Corporate Social Media Myths Dispelled
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Today’s podcast is about 10 social media myths that are commonplace in the companies and organizations that we work with at Socialized! Agency. Many of these misconceptions stop organizations from truly realizing the potential of social media (or even starting). Below I have listed the myths. Have a listen to the podcast and let me know what you think.
11 Social Media Trends for 2012
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Today’s podcast is on 11 Social Media Trends for 2012. Here’s the outline for my podcast – I would love your feedback and thoughts:
Key trends
- How not if
- TV on everything and social on everything
- Location based marketing will continue to grow
- Social cultures will evolve out of social use
- Social CRM will move mainstream
- India is rising
- A return to engagement
- Rewards versus contests
- Filters will dampen the noise
- Social networks will become more fluid and mobile
- Corporate social intranets
Potential pitfalls
- App overload
- Lack of conversation management
- No policy, training or identity management
- Lack of true internal social culture
- Domestic focus and culture
- Competitors get better at local, mobile and intimacy
- No follow-up after the contests (see engagement)
- Hard push back for no engagement
How to Hire the Right Social Media Manager the First Time
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Hiring a social media manager, social media coordinator, chief tweeter or whatever you might call it is a challenging endeavor. There are many brands which have experienced great success and many who have also shot the foot off of their brand on the internet. Social media is not a department or a cubicle, it represents the most powerful word of mouth (or word of mouse) channels that have ever existed. Too many organizations aren’t strategic about who they hire internally or how they intend on implementing social media and integrating it into their business processes. Today’s podcast covers four major areas you need to look at (there are many more) before hiring.
The Role of Psychology and Community in Guerrilla Marketing
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Psychology in marketing is still a rather untapped landscape. Since I stepped into the ring and became a guerrilla author in writing Guerrilla Social Media Marketing with Jay Conrad Levinson I have come across all kinds of misunderstanding, misuse and abuse of the term guerrilla marketing. Today’s podcast was inspired by what I can describe as a well meaning (or possibly not) but off-base commenter on the Creative Guerrilla Marketing blog.
I decided instead of just replying in the comments section that I would take the time to respond in the form of a podcast. Why? It’s so vital to understand the role of psychology and community in Guerrilla Marketing.
I also think it’s important to establish that Guerrilla Marketing is well defined, and it’s body of wisdom and definition that is widely accepted and used by over 20 million readers of the Guerrilla Marketing Series of books. Some people will take pieces of the body of wisdom and use them to suit their outlook on marketing but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In addition to this just because you slap the term guerrilla on a book, blog post or marketing campaign it doesn’t make it guerrilla.
Here are the facts:
- The term “guerrilla marketing” was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson and popularized by his best selling book that was released in 1983. Guerrilla Marketing uses unconventional means to achieve conventional goals, it relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. (We added community on-top of time, energy and imagination for Guerrilla Social Media Marketing because of the vital role it plays in social media marketing).
- Since then over 20,000,000 (that’s twenty million) books have been sold and read in Jay Levinson’s Guerrilla Marketing series of books making it the #1 best selling series of marketing books in history. Jay’s definition is the original and most widely accepted definition and grows by 1million readers and fans per year.
- Guerrilla’s apply and use the 19 Guerrilla Marketing Secrets (Principles).
Instead of paraphrasing why true guerrillas must understand and depend on psychology, I have posted in Jay’s own (timeless) words the importance:
Guerrilla marketing does not rely on guesswork because wrong guesses are so darned expensive. Instead, it relies upon psychology as much as possible. Psychology used to be a body of theories. Today, many of those theories have been debunked while others have been transformed into laws, actual laws of human behavior. Guerrillas lean on these laws because they want certainty to be a hallmark of their marketing.
There are 15 things that all guerrillas know about psychology as marketing is slowly transforming from guesswork into science:
- Purchase decisisons are made in the unconscious mind. People may say the words consciously, but they process the data in their unconscious.
- We now know how to access the unconscious mind. The way to do it is with repetition. Put these two thoughts together — purchase decisions are made in the unconscious, and you can access the unconscious with repetition, and you begin to understand the entire process of marketing.
- People are either left-brained or right-brained. Left-brained people respond to sequential, logical reasons and love marketing that gives ten reasons to buy. Right-brained people respond to emotional, aesthetic appeals and love marketing that looks stunning and tugs at heartstrings. Guerrillas are sure to hit both left and right-brained people.
- Businesses that succeed are those that form two bonds with all customers: the human bond and the business bond. The stronger the human bond, the stronger the business bond. Connect up as two human beings before you connect up as buyer and seller.
- All marketing has two messages — the stated message and the metamessage. The stated message is what you say. The metamessage, often stronger than the stated message, is what your marketing looks like, feels like, where it appears, what size it is, and how professional it appears.
- If you’re interested in increasing your share of market, the way to do it is to first increase your share of mind. If you go only for the share of market, don’t expect much customer loyalty — or even many customers.
- There are two schools of marketing hard at work in America these days — Freudian marketing, which is based on Sigmund Freud’s work and aims for a change of attitude — and Skinnerian marketing, based on B.F. Skinner’s proof of the power of behavior modification. Which does a guerrilla choose? Both. Guerrillas constantly implant attitudes while peppering their prospects with special offers that require instant action.
- During a recession, the tactics that generate sales are: leaning on current customers, enlarging the size of each transaction, offering a guarantee, and showing that high prices are an assurance against making a purchase mistake — something nobody wants to do during a recession.
- Realize that people hate taking the hard step of buying something, so guerrillas use soft steps to make the hard step a little easier. Soft steps include things like free consultations, free seminars, brochures, videos, demonstrations, and free samples.
- Full color marketing materials increase retention by 57% and increase inclination to buy by 41%. And the cost of full-color drops dramatically if you tell the printer you have the patience to wait for a gang run.
- Use as much non-verbal communication as you can. There are only about 250,000 commonly-used words in the English language, but there are 600,000 non-verbal gestures. They are more potent than the spoken words.
- You can gain guerrilla marketing power if you blend customer insight with product insight. The more your insight, the better your marketing.
- The way guerrillas view their marketing is as an opportunity to help their customers succeed. If you do the same, your profits will show it.
- A key to successful marketing is making each of your customers feel a special way. The way they should feel is unique. Not easy, but necessary.
- It is essential that you constantly feel a sense of dissatisfaction with your marketing and try to improve it without changing your identity. This personality trait will fare you well in the marketing wars.
So I have a challenge when someone (for their own self-interest) tries to redefine Guerrilla Marketing. Add to it? Great! Innovate? Great! But don’t negate, shrink, or dilute it. Back off. It is a timeless body of wisdom that has grown to be mainstream but it is more relevant than today than it was 20 years ago. It works, it’s simple, and it’s time tested.
Guerrilla Marketing is a body of wisdom and movement. It’s bigger and more important than campaigns, tricks, or tactics. To learn more about the book that started the movement (and continues to grow daily and globally). You can visit http://gmarketing.com.
Have a listen to the podcast and tell me what you think!
Like our Facebook Page
How to Build a Massive Online Identity – Interview with Patrick Schwerdtfeger
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Today’s podcast is an interview with Patrick Schwerdtfeger author of the new book “Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed” (2011, Wiley) and a regular speaker for Bloomberg TV.
We talked about how you can take one blog post and repurpose it in at least seven different ways. Patrick shared with us a few simple tips, that can build a MASSIVE online identity while working less than most of our competitors competitors.
We also covered some important social media how-to’s:
1. Five places to get great content ideas.
2. Seven ways to repurpose your content online.
3. The reality behind blogs, content and getting found online.
4. The three-part “winning formula” for social media success.
For more information on Patrick’s book and a free gift visit http://www.80shortcuts.com/gifts
Social Media Speaker Video: Going Social with CRM #SCRM 41:28
I recently delivered the keynote speaker address to CDC Software’s CRM conference in Las Vegas. This is one of the most recent social media for sales professionals talks I have done and it’ not just a promo clip. Here’s the full 41 minutes on “Going Social with CRM – How Social Media is Turning Sales Upside-down:
Here are the slides to go with the presentation:
Shane Gibson (@ShaneGibson) is a sales and social media speaker who has addressed over 100,000 people on stages on three continents over the past 15 years. He is also co-author of Guerrilla Social Media Marketing and Sociable! How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside-down. When he’s not speaking or Tweeting he is in the social media trenches working with his clients as Chief Social Officer for Socialized! Ltd. a social media agency and training organization.
Social Media Week Vancouver Registration Get Involved!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Today’s podcast is a little different than most. It outlines the upcoming Social Media Week in Vancouver that my team and I at Socialized! are putting together (with some massive help from our community, sponsors and our advisory board). I will posting a full text outline of this as well on the Social Media Week Vancouver blog shortly. In the meantime, have a listen and if you’re anywhere near Vancouver we would really like to have you attend, sponsor or even speak.
Social Media Monitoring Strategy Podcast and InfoGraphic
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Today’s podcast is on social media listening, monitoring and strategy. I have also done a quick infographic / flowchart on the process and key points from the social media monitoring podcast. Have a listen and let me know what you think.
Speaking and Training
Subscribe in iTunes
Buy Guerrilla Social Media Marketing!
Buy Sociable! Now.
