There has always been somewhat of a golden rule when it comes to marketing: “Go Where the People Are.” Now, I never officially heard that anywhere, but isn’t it true?!

Although I am young, there seems to have been a plain site evolution of where the big-time marketing took place. At one time newspaper and radio were the biggest and greatest forms of advertising. The next in line was television. Television became the best and most well-known form of advertising. Now, we are seeing the major shift of advertising going to the internet. All others are still around, for now J, but the trend of marketing has greatly shifted into the online spaces.

Internet advertising is so much more diverse than any other form, but it is the way to the masses. Not just to the masses, but you can narrow down to specific people and demographics. There are websites, search marketing, PPC, banner/link ads, social media, mobile, etc., etc., blah, blah. You get the point!

One of the largest segments in online marketing, and the one most talked about lately, is in the field of Social Media and Facebook. Everyone and their Momma has a Facebook account or AT LEAST knows what Facebook is. Facebook currently has over 400 MILLION people on its platform, and HALF of them get on EVERY DAY!! That is a whole lot of people in one place!

If you are in business, you must have also heard about Facebook Fan Pages. They are profiles for brands, organizations, and high profiles individuals. The problem is, so many business owners simply don’t understand what it is, how to start one, don’t have time, and most importantly… don’t know WHAT to do with it once they have one.

Another problem I am seeing is that people are asking, “What is my Return On Investment?” Maybe people were asking what their ROI was when first thinking about purchasing a phone system… but for some reason, I don’t think they were. They just knew it was an easy way to communicate, everyone has a phone, and it is easy to operate. Heeeyyy… that sounds exactly like a Facebook Fan Page can be for your business. Like I said earlier, everyone has a Facebook, it is an easy way to communicate with your customers, and it is easy to operate. PLUS as an extra bonus… IT IS FREE! Just costs your time, which you should SCHEDULE to manage so you don’t waste your valuable time on Facebook.

If you have been thinking about getting a Fan Page… Just Get One Already! Don’t make it more complex than it is! Stop asking so many questions and just DO IT! You can learn EVERYTHING about Fan Pages online. Learn how to set it up, brand it, add cool features, and market it to your clients and customers! Just follow the golden rule: “Go Where the People Are!” Communicate with your current and potential customers, ask them questions, answer their questions, communicate with them, become their resource in your field of expertise.

Do you know that BestBuy launched something called “Twelpforce” that they said was only 80% finished when they started?! BESTBUY! A huge brand like that jumped in with a little plan and took things in stride. Social Media is flexible and ever-changing. There is no PERFECT time to start. The perfect time was YESTERDAY.

However, if you feel that all of this is overwhelming and you don’t have the time, we at The W.L. Gennuine Company can create a strategy, implement your branding, and assist you with your Facebook Fan Page. Just let us know your ideas and we will give you ours. Let us help you get your Facebook Fan Page already!

In this week’s Marketing Minute, we address the issue of permission-based marketing and why it is so important to gain permission from your customers and prospects before you communicate with them. It is an important process since permission is often the difference between growing a relationship or abruptly and permanently closing that relationship off.

Let’s start with a definition of permission. For marketing purposes it means that someone has either explicitly asked you to communicate with them or it can be reasonably presumed that they are open to communicating with you.

Explicit permission comes in many forms but here are a few of the more common ones. A customer completes a satisfaction survey, signs up for your newsletter on your website or calls or emails you directly for a brochure, a quote or for information about your products or services. The common thread here is that they have initiated the contact from their side with the expectation that you will follow up. The second form of permission is where it can be reasonably implied that contact is OK. This also comes in many forms, such as someone hands you their business card at a meeting or trade show, the person has done business with you in the past or is actively using your products or services now, there is some established relationship between you and the person such as you serve on committee together or know each other in a way where they clearly know you and what you do. Basically, this is a group of permission givers that while they have not explicitly asked for you to send them information, they at least know who you are and can easily identify who you are when you reach out to them.

With this understanding of permission in hand, let’s move on to why this permission thing is so important.

Many people assume that marketing seems to be all about them, what they sell and do. In reality, however, marketing done well is all about someone else – your customers and prospects and what they want and what they need. When you’ve grasped this concept, you begin to understand where this permission thing fits in. In gaining permission before you communicate, you immediately make the statement that your message, and by extension your products and services, are all about fulfilling someone else’s need, not just your own. And, WOW, what a powerful message that can be. In fact, marketing that does not follow these rules is generally tagged by the market with phrases such as “junk mail” or “spam,” not descriptions you want applied to your message, we’d guess.

The Marketing Minute is actually an example of permission-based marketing. Everyone who receives this fits into at least one of the two categories we mentioned. But even with the permission in place, we still respect the right of all our contacts to not receive this message by immediately presenting the option to unsubscribe.

If you are interested in learning more about permission-based marketing, give us a call at 985.446.6088 or complete our contact form now. There is also a great summary of permission-based marketing you can download now free from our email technology partner, Constant Contact. Oh, and by the way, when you call or complete the form, we’d like to thank you for giving us permission to contact you.

To get this week’s Marketing Minute off to a rockin’ start, please click here to enjoy the intro to one of the most fun songs ever recorded, "Rockin' Robin," performed by Bobby Day. (You might want to turn down the volume or plug in the headset if the boss is around.)
What a great song. It's also a great lead in to this week’s Marketing Minute as we delve into the question on the minds of many businesses, “What is this Twitter thing all about and why should I care?”

The answer lies in a single word: “engagement,” or the process of drawing your customers into a relationship built around a conversation. That’s what social media is all about, really – engaging in a conversation with your customers. Okay, so if engagement is the key, let’s think now about the more traditional opportunities for engaging your customer. Mostly there is a physical element to it. They have to come in, call, encounter you at a business meeting and so on. Even if you were to do the engagement thing all the time – something no one has the time to do – there will always be people you never get to engage simply due to limitations of time and space.

Ah … now is it becoming clearer? Twitter and other social media outlets allow you to engage your audience on an ongoing, persistent basis without the limits of time or space. It even allows the conversation to go viral (as we say) by having what you said “re-Tweeted” to other people you probably don’t even know. Arguably, among the various social media tools available, none is as purely conversational as Twitter with its fairly informal exchange of ideas and perspectives that mimic a live conversation.

The key word here is conversation. Ever get into a pointless and deadly dull conversation? Typically it’s the ones where the topic is “Me, me, me. I, I, I.” While we may suffer through it, we definitely are not going to feel engaged and we will probably do everything we can to avoid, not engage, that person in the future. By contrast, good conversationalists focus not on what is interesting to them, but what is interesting to you. It’s called quality content, and in the world of successful social media, success is ALL about quality content. It’s also about listening.

In next week’s Marketing Minute, we’ll go into the details of what quality content is, and where you should go within your organization to produce it.

So until next week we say, “Blow Rockin’ Robin ‘cause we’re really gonna rock tonight! Tweet! Tweet!”