How social media works. Hmmm… or doesn’t work. Or works sometimes. Or never.

Kind of depends on who you speak to. Kind of depends on who you are.

Before I met them all, I did actually take a bit of time to think about what I would  say (hey, I’m a professional, right?). I also thought a bit about the people I have heard speaking about social media and what they had to say. It wasn’t a happy time. It confirmed, for me at least, one of the core problems we’re facing right now:

Social media ha sa lot of people convinced they are Tesco. Or at least that they are playing in the same marketing field.

(here’s a hint. You’re not)

I like social media. A lot. I can see how it can develop further and I like the communication model. We’re just going to have to get through the childlike period we’re in now. It’s the same thing that happens anytime we have a new technology or set of tools at our disposal. The first thing that happens is a lot of people appoint themselves as experts (pardon me, ‘gurus’) and go off to make money convincing the unaware or uninitiated that this is the ONLY THING YOU NEED! Email marketing was the thing right? It’s the best way to communicate with your customers, right? It’s easy to prospect new customers, right?

Except when it isn’t. Which is a lot of the time.

Back to my Tesco analogy….

A lot of people who talk about social media tend to use the big boy analogies. This is how Dominos screwed up. This is how M&S are doing it. This is how you engage your customers with your brand.

Who gives a shit? You’re not a national brand. You’re not recognisable. You’re not even in the same stadium.

What matters to your bottom line is way way (WAY) different.

See? This isn’t a rant about social media at all! It’s a bit of a rant about marketing in general.

At the SME level, marketing is a very direct activity. It has to connect directly with your bottom line. It has to connect directly with your networks and your surroundings. It can’t be abstract. It’s got to be a concrete building block.

And social media can be a tool you use. It can be a tool you use to communicate, to interact, to promote, to inspire loyalty, develop a wider network. All of these things.

But at the heart of your social media strategy has to be a solid marketing strategy for your business.

Otherwise you’re just pissing in the wind.

- j

But I mean it this time. I’ve been busy.

But it’s been the start of the month this month and guess what that means? My inbox is assaulted with dozens of different email newsletters! And when that happens I get to say to myself: “Great! Just what I’ve been needing! A bunch of emails that have nothing to do with me from people who send out thousands of these things to everyone in their contact database.”

Perfect. I love being a number within a database.

Don’t take this to mean that I like neither databases nor email marketing. It’s not that at all.

It’s just that so many people do it in a really lazy (and less-effective) way. I find that a bit offensive.

Is it so much to ask for companies to put a little bit of thought into what they are sending, who they are sending it to and why they are sending it? But no. The majority of newsletters I get spread the same messages to the same people in the same ways.

How much of it is relevant to their intended audience? A pretty frickin’ low amount.

The thing is. Is doesn’t have to be this way. And it also doesn’t take that much time or effort to do it right. You can do this within your free systems (like Mailchimp) just as well as you can do this within your paid ones. You can do this in every CRM system I have ever seen. You can do this within a spreadsheet if you absolutely must.

It all comes down to one of my pet subjects: Relevance.

If something is relevant to me, I’m interested.

If something isn’t relevant to me, I’m not.

It actually is that simple.

Making Your Communications Relevant

When I speak to companies about this subject, the big worry is time. How, they want to know, can they possibly tailor their messages to each individual contact? Won’t that take a lot of time?

It actually doesn’t, and the truth is, you don’t have to tailor it to each individual contact within your database. You just have to make sure that you are sending relevant information to each person.

That’s where a strong database comes into play. If you accurately segment your database you can come up with categories and interest areas pretty quickly.

I’ll give you an example that I worked on a couple of years ago. I was working with a firm of Financial Advisors. The majority of the advisors had a pretty extensive database of clients, but very few of them actually used these databases effectively.

I say very few. The reality is – none of them did.

One of the first things we looked at was how we could target the users with communications that would interest them.

For them, we broadly broke down their customers into three main areas:

1. Young People and Newly Married
   These clients were at a stage in their life where they were looking to the future. They were thinking about babies and student debt…about buying their first home or getting a nicer car. They were looking at their life ahead of them and were excited.
2. Middle Age & Families
   These clients had families and were looking for security. They had families. They thought about their kids security and college tuition. They thought about their health and their retirement. They thought about how they could get rid of their mortgages.
3. Retirement Age
   These clients were thinking about the next generation. They thought about their grandkids and their inheritance. They thought about their health and their estates. They thought about their families and their security.

Three very different types of clients. Three very different stories. Three very different interests.

Why on earth would you send the same messages to these three different groups? How relevant do you think you’re going to be to them? How much are they going to associate themselves with your message?

The answer is….not a lot. Not a lot at all.

It’s really pretty easy to do (marketing is, after all, simple) and there is no excuse for being lazy. You have to make sure the messages you are sending are relevant.

Or you can feel free to call me ;-)

- jordan

Or alternatively, if you’re anything like me, sigh…

This won’t be particularly shocking to most of you. For those of us who work in the field (well, marketing in general) it’s even less so.

I think we’ve finally reached the point where spam is starting to outweigh the good in some of our favourite social media tools.

I don’t know who first decided that all sales is a numbers game, but if I could I’d go back in time and punch them right in the mouth. I’m sure they meant well. I’m sure they meant to say something along the lines of “you can’t get if you don’t ask” in order to convince people that it takes effort to get sales.

I’m very sure (I say in a “oh please” tone of voice) that they didn’t mean that you should just spam everyone you can see with any old shite.

Why this topic?

In the past four days I’ve had four emails (sorry inMails) through LinkedIn and five twitter DMs that were directly trying to sell me something that is absolutely no use to me.

No attempt at seeing if the opportunity was relevant to me. No attempt to engage me and tempt me to it. Just very easy and very direct spam.

Buy this.

Sign up here.

And what is worse is that these are coming from people I know. People who I have met. People who, for all intent, are part of my ‘trusted’ network.

And what do they do with that trust? They send me spam. They use their network of social media contacts and send out spam.

Guess what the result has been – I delete their message and I evaluate my relationship with these people.

30 seconds of quick spam = serious doubts of a future business relationship.

Is that really the best they can do with these wonderful new tools?

I can sometimes sound quite negative about social media tools. I’m actually a big fan. I love them. More importantly I see how powerful they can be for interaction and relationship building – with your customers, your employees, your public.

And what happens? You devalue it all with a 30 second piece of spam.

If you’re in someone’s network, you have a responsibility to respect that relationship. Regardless of the toolset (be it social or not) you have a responsibility to you network to respect them and build your relationships.

Enough already.

It’s a very quick way to losing a network. It’s a very easy way of losing my business.

(and I’m not the only one)

- j

It’s a rookie error, but one that an awful lot of companies do. It drives me nuts.

How many companies do you know (particularly in the SME marketplace) who actually understand their database and segment it properly? How many companies take the time to look at their database and determine the true up-sell and cross-sell opportunities? How many companies adjust their communication to their database? Not as many as I’d like.

Bigger brands do this really well. Take Amazon as a case study for a second. Amazon has spent a lot of time and money in developing a pretty sophisticated bit of recommendation software. And it works.

What do they do? They look at your spending habits – what have you bought before? What are you spending money on? What products match up? What products are other people like you buying?

They have perfected the art of putting products you’re likely to buy right in front of your nose. It makes for an easy sell. You’re buying something anyway, and haven’t you wanted to get that book for a while?

Why do smaller companies not do this? It makes no sense to me. The tools are there to use. All you need is a basic CRM system and an email marketing tool of some kind. It’s not expensive. It’s not difficult.

I’ll give you an example. A couple of years ago we worked with a financial advisory company in Canada. We had to talk to a lot of independent financial advisors about their business portfolio. It was shocking. They all had an extensive database of clients. They had absolutely no system for communication that would lead to more sales.

I started at the simplest point and asked an obvious questions – do people’s concerns (financially) change through their life? I got a simple answer: Of course it does.

It seems that young families are worried about mortgages and saving for their young children, middle age people were worried about university tuition and retirement and older people were worried about retiring and inheritance tax.

So why, I asked, are you sending the young families information on inheritance tax? Why aren’t you sending them the things they care about?

No answer.

The key to all of that is relevance.

When something is relevant, you’ll look at it. If something isn’t relevant. It’s spam.

When I work with a company on marketing campaigns, I start by matching their message with their targets.

What does that mean?

It means figuring out what parts of their business are relevant to their specific targets. What are they going to find relevant? What are the buttons you need push? What is going to make the company stand out?

There is simply no point in spamming your targets with everything you do. Choose carefully and make your offering relevant. It’s the easiest way of getting a response.

Or at least take me off your email database.

-j

Anyway, it’s a been a week.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m getting sick of people not managing their data lists. We all know that email marketing became the ‘golden ticket’ a few years ago. “Hurrah” thousands of small businesses cried, ” look at how many people we can reach for little (or no) cost!”

(sure now the big thing is social media and, guess what, the problems are the same)

I got to thinking about this because I got a really annoying email in my inbox today. It was a pretty standard email. And it was a bulk email. They are looking for business and want to sell to me.

That’s not what irritated me. What really got my back up was the fact that I have un-subscribed from this list three times. Three times. I don’t want their emails. I don’t want their company. I don’t want their shitty service. But I don’t seem to have a choice in this.

That’s just poor marketing. First off you send me an email I didn’t ask for. Then you compound my annoyance by having a shitty list management system. So I’ve now clocked who this company is and, needless to say, I’ll have nothing good to say about them.

I do have a point. Email marketing can be a good way of reaching people. It can be a great way of keeping in touch with your current clients and customers, and it can be a great way of keeping your profile up with people you don’t see a lot. It really can.

Email can also be an effective way of reaching someone new. We recently ran a campaign with a client that used (as one of the steps) an email to cold prospects and we received a tremendous response. But that’s because we did it properly.

I don’t see the fundamentals ever changing. If something is relevant to me, I’ll be interested. If it’s not. I won’t. That’s all.

I’m going to flush some fish down the toilet and go play squash.

- jordan

I was having my lunch today when an email came into my company inbox (you know, the one we all set up with the info@ or office@ addresses) with the subject line “FAO Jordan”.

Hmm…guess I should read this one.

Oh how it was worth it. A helpful company (down south) decided to email me this text:

“Further to the information which I emailed through to you last week I do not seem to have received your response. I do appreciate that this area of specialism can be controversial and a little awkward to discuss, however it is real and it is happening every day.

We would like the opportunity to discuss the solutions against your private space being invaded. This can come in a variety of guises which include your car being bugged, your house or business premises being bugged. We have the most sophisticated electronic technology tools to find these devices and clear your mind.

Furthermore we also investigate fidelity, please note that this is a very sensitive area, however husbands and wives are faced with this issue on a daily basis. SBG simply establish a route to providing you with the peace of mind which allows your life to continue as before. Many of the cases which we undertake have a harmonious solution.

We act to maintain healthy relationships, give people and businesses peace of mind from espionage and many more services. We are delighted for our award winning status and we are delighted to receive our recent accolade for discovering a device which was publicly announced in the national press relating to a high profile professional footballer.

Please note that many people are suffering from listening devices, cheating partners and many more issues in life which we are positioned to work on putting right. Our services are cost effective and bring solutions without breaking the bank.

I would be delighted to receive you comments. If you would prefer talk to me privately then please call my direct line “

I’ve been a good boy and left out his email, company name and phone number.

Favourite bit:

- “I do not seem to have received your response” – oh well shit, I didn’t know I was obligated my man. So sorry to disappoint you!

I love the fact that the whole email reads in a quasi-threatening tone. It was put on an official looking document and everything. Why would you ever think I would respond to this? And if I did mistake this for something official and contact you, do you have any idea how annoyed I’d be at a sales call?

If you’re going to send out cold emails to businesses, do your best not to take the ‘fear’ route, OK?

-jordan

You need to have a big thing in pants to be capable for big things.

I admire the sentiment…if not the effectiveness of the email.

-jordan