Being responsive is at the core of interactive marketing.

Consumer empowerment has taken over marketer power for what seems like the past decade. With the tremendous growth of social media, consumers expect marketers to know everything about their buying habits and patterns. Social media has enabled consumer loyalty, but not necessarily the consumer experience. A company may have a massive brand presence on Facebook, but having one million fans does not mean they are giving the consumer the desired brand experience.

Interactive Marketing Plus

Social media provides the opportunity for market researchers to listen to and mine consumer insights, but this is not the only opportunity presented. Social media allows consumers to directly respond to the changing marketing conditions. Social networking has created a virtual space for people to be advocates for their fellow brand ambassadors. However, interactive marketing involves more than just internet marketing.

Crowdsourcing & Measurable Results

Consumers are more likely to talk about a brand via social media rather than through surveys. Although social networks use analytical software to produce measureable results, they are slow to make the data, analysis, and insights available to marketers. Marketers need to reconnect with consumers to optimize the consumer promise and the brand promise.

The mission and challenge for marketers is to be responsive to consumers’ concerns and behaviors with a more measureable, data driven approach by customizing the marketing experience.

It is time for marketers to engage with consumers and effectively meet their expectations. The question remains: when it comes to interactive marketing, who is really in control?

Evolve or become the next fossil in the wake of social media and brand management. The days of sitting in the ivory tower on a pile of cash are over, you’ve got to be with the masses in the muck to get any kind of footing in the new business of curating the attention of others.

But how?

Be a thought leader, become a peer, and transform your brand into a competitive, free-content driven resource for others to utilize. “It used to be so easy when dollars equaled dominance, but now there’s a digital fly in the ointment,” (Brand Week, 4.4.11, p. 12) and that fly is causing huge ripples for brands.

It’s all well and good to be a big dog brand but without drawing people’s focused attention to your content, a big old fossilized dog your brand will become. Content can be bought but the reality is content is generated every second by a spectrum of free agents, and catering to and providing for that new power is essential.

It is important now to bolster one’s in-house talents and recruit those well-versed in generating interest in the new way — social media. Whether brands adapt or not, those who are watching them are most likely tweeting, facebooking and blogging about them — after all “a person’s a person no matter how small” (thanks Dr. Seuss).

The TEDTalks have been a constant source of inspiration for me with their seemingly simple mantra of “Ideas Worth Spreading”. Those of us who love TEDTalks and those of you who are new to them, should be excited about the TED Conference’s newest contribution to our world — “Ads Worth Spreading“.

“Ads Worth Spreading” is a challenge to the ad world to submit truly creative work and not just a 30 second regular commercial to bombard a viewer.

The charge is to inspire a conversation, an action, a move towards social good — to create an advertisement that is worth more than its quantified profits. Maybe people would buy more Ho-Hos if they knew that a portion of the proceeds went to funding urban farming or school gardens to insure proper nutrition in young children. Chris Anderson, the curator of the TED Conference, even cites Wal Mart as a partner in the conference that wanted to discuss how they could become more sustainable as a company.

I’m in love with the idea that we ought to be tapping into our advertising as a means to inspire others. How many times have you felt harassed by these commercial “come-ons”, as Chris Anderson puts it, and quickly turn the channel or leave the site? Chances are high you lose interest with boring, “sales-y” adverts and probably get awfully annoyed.

Advertising should follow the short film aesthetic – buying into this continued conversation with engaged consumers we keep talking about – and make an ad that tells a story, that provides more intrinsic value than cold profit. We are a global community surrounded by devices and even clothing/accessories that perform more actions than their base purpose.

We are a multi-tasking world and so it follows that click-through rates are falling because our ads are serving only the dollar and cents purpose. The rate at which we inhale media daily has not translated into close attention to this same media. “Ads Worth Spreading”  challenges those of us in the advertising world to create that which will keep the ever-illusive close attention, to cultivate a more informed conversation between consumer and company.

Two dimensional QR codes have been alive and abroad for several years and yet, the U.S. hasn’t quite taken to them.  Customers and users still aren’t sure what to do with them or why they’re on packages and posters. The early adopters didn’t spread as quickly as other technologies that were more tangible.

Marketers must educate the public about using the QR codes, why they are useful and why they are integral to our mobile world. Perhaps they’ve been marketed wrong or not at all – there certainly was no debut like the unveiling of the iPad2 so the codes have largely fallen under the radar. B2B Magazine found that “1% of U.S. mobile phone owners and 5% of smartphone owners had used a 2D barcode scanner in the previous three months” (B2B 3.14.11, p.11).

The importance of the QR code is its ability to act as a bridge between our physical and printed world to the virtual world. The 2D codes offer a direct line to further information for consumers. Post™ Cereals, Macy’s and art museums now sport the codes as another way to attract their audience to the continued conversation (discounts, events, consumer appreciation, surveys, give-aways, contests) and further strengthen the feedback loop. The inherent risks of the technology are broken links, codes that aren’t compatible with users’ mobile devices and thus loss of interest. Given time to develop and greater accessibility this could be the new technology with which the U.S. finally gets on board.

We all know them, the mascots of large corporations — the creepy King of Burger King (since retired), Flo with her bump-it of Progressive Insurance, Mayhem (a personal favorite) of All State Insurance and now “Peggy” of Discover Credit-Cards in his Coogi sweater (tapping into call-center nightmares and a touch of xenophobia).

The latter two fall into a category of marketing that highlights the awful aspects of life or customer service as the antithesis to their great services.  Domino’s pioneered the first giant step into this category creating ads emphasizing how truly terrible their pizza was.

Instead of denying the problem, Domino’s tapped its customers’ complaints and made the necessary improvements. Then they televized it with customer pictures from the dark ages of pizza delivered with all the toppings stuck to the box, juxtaposed against customer pictures of the next generation pizza used in their national ad campaigns. You know you’ve got smart PR people working for you when you can talk into Oprah’s third ear, Gayle King about a pizza chain.

How does this affect change in other industries? I’ll sound like a broken record, but social media is the golden ticket. We’re getting back to basics where the customer is always right and away from the old school of marketing where the customer was merely a vessel to imbibe what we poured out.

Complaints can be addressed in real time; they can even be tracked to locate the person complaining so it’s easy to provide them with the nearest available store, repair center or customer service outpost. Change is scary and it’s especially scary if it’s what’s holding your company back from its full potential. In the case of Domino’s, a complete overhaul was essential to garnering larger market shares and new customers. Social media carries the conversation over from that half minute ad into the full monty of Twitter and Facebook and enhances that almighty bottom line.

Myth #1 about social media: Don’t call yourself a guru.

Never would I ever presume to be a guru but my Twitter does label me as “The Official Twitter of …”.  This was first point made by HubSpot Social Media Scientist, Dan Zarrella in his webinar, “The Science of Timing“: identify yourself authoritatively so people will listen when you talk through social media, email and blogging.

This was my first webinar and besides the tinny audio it was a fascinating presentation and most importantly, useful. Which was nice, because if you’re going to talk for an hour it had better be about something I can put to work and incorporate into my life.

Zarrella illustrated the various ways in which timing and frequency of posting can effect the number of people reading, retweeting, linking, blogging, commenting, subscribing, following, liking your content. He compared the social media spaces and communities that engage in conversation with one another daily to a cocktail party: everyone’s milling around talking at the same time — it’s hard to be heard in that setting. So what is it like when you’ve separated yourself out from that rowdy bunch? What does the data look like when we measure these effects throughout the day by hour, from Sunday through Monday?

Here are your marching orders:

Late in the day and week is the most retweetable time during the day — 2 to 5pm have the most activity on Twitter for retweets.
Tweet more — don’t be afraid to tweet more, Zarrella’s data show that someone tweeting 22 times a day has more followers.
Don’t crowd your content — don’t tweet the same link the same way if you tweet it more than once, give your tweet a little breathing room before you tweet the same link in a different way.
Weekends are best for Facebook sharing — on Twitter, the volume of stories on the wekend is less than during the week but Facebook sharing spikes on the weekends.
Experiment with emailing on the weekends – if you’re looking to up your click through rate, weekends are optimal for highest click through rate.
Send Email very early in the morning to take advantage of contra-competitive timing — this is the idea of the cocktail party, you’ll get more attention if you’re talking when other people aren’t, such as the early morning when people are waking up and checking their email for the first time that day. You want them to wake up to your message.
Send more email — if you’r generating good content, the more emails you send the less people will unsubscribe, and those that do aren’t your target audience.
Your newest subscribers are your best — they are volunteering to read your content and listen, the more recent your subscriber the higher your click through rate.
Know your audience — you can conduct a quick survey to find out your audience’s reading habits and what they want to have sent to them.
Blog on the weekends for comments – you’ve got their full attention if you’ve posted something on Saturday or Sunday early in the morning.
Blog early in the morning for links — most bloggers are aiming to write their posts from 8-10am so they are looking for source material to write about which has been posted by 6 or 7am.
Blog more frequently — the more frequently you blog, the more views you’ll get.

You can view The Science of Timing webinar recording here to get more detailed information and data about the effects of timing on social media, email and blogging.

Another windy morning in Chicago last Thursday ushered in an intrepid LoSasso quartet to The Drake Hotel. Awaiting LoSasso President, Scott LoSasso and Vice President, Mark Hollingsworth were professors from colleges and universities around the Midwest, plumbing the depths of LoSasso’s interactive marketing expertise at the 2011 Spring Marketing Management Association Conference. The talk was organized by Don Jones and resulted in great dialogue between area professors and our LoSasso team.

The presentation addressed changes in the marketing industry and what businesses are looking for in new hires, especially those undergraduates hot off the presses. Particular attention was paid to content driven interaction: the driving force behind creating a space for consumers to interact with one another and with businesses. Industry forums and social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare) have become the new quilting circle or local watering hole where information is readily exchanged, available and digested at a rapid pace.

The message was clear: the toolbox has changed but the fundamental principles of marketing have stayed the same. Developing a relationship with a client is still at the core of those principles; it is the way in which we enhance that relationship that has grown to include social media, SEO (search engine optimization) and the need to build a presence both physically and virtually for every client.

Frequent and consistent messaging continues to be of utmost importance but a close second is the need for silos within businesses to break down. More than ever, direct marketing and public relations are completely meshed together: communications and marketing departments have to interface constantly to maintain that consistent messaging for optimal success in their campaigns.

The discussion was also centered around best practices for hiring and what makes a new hire successful. Scott LoSasso initiated the conversation by outlining optimal job candidates that contribute to a team work environment. Incoming new hires are strong writers, positive team players, involved in an array of social media platforms, creative thinkers and detail-oriented. For more information about skill sets businesses look for in new hires, visit iMedia Connection.

Thank you to the Marketing Management Association, Don Jones, The Drake Hotel and all in attendance for a great open discussion about our evolving industry!

Last fall, New York City’s subway cars got fancy new clothes.  Striving to buttress the MLB’s “Never Miss a Moment” campaign, advertisements wrapped both inside and outside the cars to promote Major League Baseball’s coverage of the Yankees. Industrial cities, like those bordering Chicago, could benefit by branching out into advertising space they may not have used yet just like the MLB.

Chicago “L” cars, both the old and the new 5000 series, offer a visible and mobile space to communicate brands and industries. For those companies that build mass transportation equipment, advertising their products and processes would be a great way to educate the very masses they transport.

Chicago already has a solid force of manufacturers who could use these spaces to advertise and illustrate behind-the-scenes of machining.  Statistics from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Annual Survey of Manufacturers show the depth of manufacturing in Illinois:

• As of 2006, Illinois ranked 5th in “annual value added productivity by manufacturing of over $107 billion.”
• About three-quarters of the state’s manufacturers are located in the Northeastern Opportunity Return Region, with 38 percent of Illinois’ approximately 18,900 manufacturing plants located in Cook County.”

In January of this year, 40.7 million people rode the buses and subways of Chicago. Instead of TBS and MLB plastering the cars, there could be informational advertising presented in a dynamic way highlighting local industries. Area metalworking companies could create interactive advertisements that appeal to a range of ages, much like a science center exhibition.  It could even spark cross-generational interest in careers in the manufacturing industry. Content developed for the campaigns could show different components of the cars; how they work, who made them, with interior graphics that visually peel away the train exteriors to reveal the inner workings of the transportation we don’t think twice about … unless it’s running late.

What does net neutrality and its ensuing court battles have to do with B2B and B2C marketing strategies?  A bushel and a peck.

Since fall of last year, the F.C.C. and large corporations (Google, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast) have been duking it out over government regulation of the internet – which as of right now is still considered an information service and therefore a public resource.  The internet is the last standing outlet for democratized free information — telecommunications services are far more privatized, without F.C.C. regulation, and so can determine what information a user views.

“The suits could potentially free Internet service providers from regulation — allowing them to treat their own content better than that of rivals, and block content that they didn’t like or competed with. Verizon and AT&T have about 60 percent of wireless subscribers. And 80 percent of Americans live in areas with only two wireline broadband providers. In a market with such slender competition, consumers are likely to lose out.” (3.6.11, Net Neutrality, back in court, NYT)

So how does this affect a marketer? Well, it’s really quite simple.  Social media has exploded in the industry as the best way to establish working relationships with established and would-be consumers.

Interactive marketing works off diverse and publicly accessible platforms to interact freely with the masses.  Marketers on the small side of business and upstarts would lose the advantage of the last free information channel and new clientele.  Now, that open channel is vulnerable to restriction and tiered-pricing for faster access to predetermined content.

At the very least if net neutrality becomes a thing of the past, the SEO (search engine optimization) and mobile marketing games will have to adapt and at a cost.

” ‘Cause you can look right through me, walk right by me, and never know I’m there…” Or so goes Amos Hart’s sad little song in the musical Chicago.  Poor invisible Amos’ verse embodies the challenges facing websites struggling to create relevant content.

There’s been much debate over the amount of social media we process as humans on a daily basis: are we so inundated with messaging that we are developing blind spots?  This becomes the main hurdle facing the advertising business and it means blending traditional with more conversation-oriented practices.

Consumers now look to companies’ Facebook pages before being directed to their home pages.  If you want to be in AllState’s “good hands” or reap the benefits of State Farm’s magical jingle, commercials are telling you to visit their Facebook page.

At the end of the day, something is marketed so it can be sold and if we go back to the founding principles of customer service, the conversation between consumer and company reigns supreme.  Oddly enough, social media in its cold digital form has resurrected the more human approach to sales while benefiting the bottom line.

Questions, concerns, praise and complaints can all be aired on a company’s Facebook page allowing brands to respond directly to consumers and establish an open line of communication.  What better way to get instant feedback while developing a relationship with the very people to whom you sell?  The concept of the “invisible man” gets broken down when companies encourage their consumers to actively participate in the discussion, whatever the topic.