How To Communicate With Your Consumer

I was forwarded this blog from mediapost a few weeks back but only sat down to read it today. It's written by Brandon Evans who is a senior exec at the Mr. Youth agency and it is a very well stated and simple to follow instruction manual for digital consumer communication. Check it out...

5 Rules For Snagging Consumer 2.0

"Know your consumer" is a business commandment certain to be deeply ingrained at the heart of any successful company. Never, however, has that consumer morphed so quickly or become so elusive. It is important for marketers to grasp and understand the key drivers of this new empowered consumer, one who has grown up with brand new perspectives and redefined the interplay of communications, relationships, brands, technology and media. This is Consumer 2.0.

Presented here is a guide to understanding the mindset and expectations of this newly defined consumer.

1.Authenticity Trumps Celebrity: Consumer 2.0 responds to honest, relevant messaging from peers over marketing speak and celebrity endorsement. Not surprisingly, they increasingly trust recommendations from fellow consumers. In a recent SurveyU study, only 15% of college students agreed that a celebrity's endorsement of a product would influence their opinion of that brand.

2.Niche Is the New Norm: Consumers 2.0 do not form a mass market. They relish in choices and look for products and services that speak to them personally. This is a generation that simply doesn't follow a common path - they are more committed to following their hearts than a path pre-established for them by their parents, school or community. They are a generation that doesn't feel forced to a universal definition of cool but feels free to pursue their interests. As technology continues to bring the world closer together, people will increasingly associate themselves with people and groups that share a common bond.

3.Bite-Size Communications Dominate: Consumer 2.0 digests short, personal and highly relevant messaging in bulk while growing increasingly adept at blocking out noise. While adults send three emails for every text message, teens almost completely flip the ratio with 2.5 texts for every email. Now, technologies like Twitter are transmitting these communications across groups of people. Having grown up with the Internet, Consumer 2.0 is trained to multi-task and will at best provide divided attention. Communications need to reflect that.

4.Personal Utility Drives Adoption: Consumer 2.0 chooses to consume what they find useful in their lives over manufactured marketing needs. According to a recent SurveyU study, 78% of college students feel that people place too much emphasis on brands. Certainly, the brand still plays a key role in some categories but, increasingly, that will continue to wane as customers place more importance on products that meet their needs and have many more outlets for learning about new products from trusted sources.

5.Consumers Own Brands: Consumer 2.0 will speak about, repurpose and associate with your brand as they see fit. Empowered by new technologies, they require a larger voice in the brands they champion, helping to create and reinvent products and communications. They will increasingly write about products through blogs and product reviews and participate in online discussions. Marketers must focus on reaching and impressing their core vocal consumers in order to substantiate other marketing claims and spread to new consumers.

Shifting ad dollars to "new media" is not enough and will leave marketers short of their goals. Marketers need to demand that their marketing teams and agencies answer the right questions and deliver the right results (hint: not impressions).

They should begin focusing on the number and depth of engagements they have with consumers and the propensity their consumers have for recommending their product or service to others.

Listening closely to your consumers and engaging them in deeper, two-way relationships is a great start. Paired with an understanding of Consumer 2.0, marketers will be better equipped to navigate their businesses through unprecedented change. After all, Consumer 3.0 probably isn't far behind.

More Twitter Stuff - How To

This post is brief. Just a re-post of my DM News blurb about how to start Twittering:

Get started
Twitter is just one of the tools that you need to have in your social media toolbox along with things like a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, a blog, and an RSS feed on your website. We are living in an age of instant communication and a river of information flowing through our social networks, mobile phones, and email inboxes. Twitter is just the latest and most streamlined method for obtaining that information. So sign up and create an account, then find a few people you'd like to follow such as a celebrity or guru in your field, and follow them. Watch what they “tweet.” Some have lots to say and some have very little. Some “re-tweet” what others have said and some add links to photos, videos or news stories. This will help you understand how you should communicate. As you follow others, you will find people following you. You don't have to do a ton of marketing for your Twitter account. Just get started.

Sports and Twitter

A recent USA Today article discussed how athletes are embracing Twitter. Mega stars like Shaq and Lance Armstrong have clearly mastered this micro-blogging medium, but so have many of the lesser known athletes. I was asked to comment specifically on Twittering NASCAR drivers. Answering the question, why would an athlete use Twitter? I noted that NASCAR is extremely fan-centric and that Twitter helps connect the drivers even closer to their fans. Meanwhile the drivers’ sponsors can gain tremendous access to the fans through instant, direct, and endorsed messaging.

My NASCAR section was part of a bigger USA Today sports section profile on how athletes are using Twitter to connect with their fanbase. You can read that HERE. The NASCAR part I was featured in is below...

NASCAR Stars Aren't Rolling In To Twitter
by Nate Ryan and Arin Karimian
4/29/09

Bobby Labonte has been Twittering for a month, and the 2000 Sprint Cup champion's followers have grown from 50 to 1,600.

"It makes a fan say, 'He puts jeans on one leg at a time like I do,' " says Labonte, the only full-time Cup driver Twittering on his behalf. "It helps them relate."

NASCAR's emphasis on fan access makes Twitter growth likely, says Larry Weintraub, CEO of Fanscape, a Los Angeles agency that spreads awareness for athletes and celebrities through social media. "A couple of major drivers will do it, and then everyone will," Weintraub says. "If Dale Earnhardt Jr. starts Tweeting a couple of times a day, he'll have 50,000 followers, and it'll change the game in NASCAR."

Weintraub expects NASCAR stars eventually will learn its benefits as many sponsors (Ford, UPS and M&Ms have NASCAR-themed Twitter accounts) already have. "It's the most direct form of advertising ever and think of how sponsor-driven NASCAR is," Weintraub says. "For Kyle Busch to win and thank M&Ms on Twitter, that's really helpful."

Earnhardt doesn't have a Twitter account because he says "there's a bunch of imposters … I would never get into social networking. It's dangerous." Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson, all Cup champions, also have passed.

Some athletes in other sports have chosen to Twitter to counter/refute "pheets" — tweets from users posing as athletes. Lance Armstrong and Shaquille O'Neal, for example, initially began using Twitter because they noticed imposters on the site. Hence, O'Neal's handle: THE_REAL_SHAQ.

Are Facebook Apps Still Relevant?

I was interviewed by the publication DM News recently about Facebook Apps and whether they are still relevant. I won't re-hash the article, you can read it HERE. My favorite part is the misprint where they call me the CEP of Fanscape. A few years ago that would have made me the Chief Executive Partier. Later on I became the Chief Executive Pontificator and today I think I'm just the Chief Executive Papa to my little boy - or better yet, the Chief Exhausted Papa.

Here's a snapshot of my quotes from the article:

“Several years ago a great widget, game or video could garner millions of views because it was different, funny or controversial,” notes Larry Weintraub, CEP of LA-based Fanscape, which has completed social media programs for clients such as NBC, Game Stop to POM Wonderful pomegranate juice. “Today that same piece of content may only garner interactions in the thousands, so marketers are realizing it's not about hitting tons of people—it's about hitting the right people.”

And whether it's an entertainment brand, or a packaged consumer product, marketers are also realizing they want their social media application to do more that simply tout a brand. “There's no point in building a social media application that doesn't have a call to action,” Weintraub stresses. “There has to be something tangible—it can't be that a bunch of people threw a virtual snowball or played a game.”

I'm personally over the Facebook app. I got sucked in by the Zombie game, that was fun for a while (that's my zombie over there to the right - I just looked and it turns out I'm a Zombie Mogul - who knew?). But now people attack my zombie and I think to myself, "Don't you have something better to do?" I know I've accepted about a dozen apps, but I never look at them. I don't think I've ever actually gone out of my way to find and download an app. At least not a frivolous one. Strike that, I have downloaded the Shelfari app. I like the way it keeps track of the books I'm reading. But like the Zombie app, I haven't looked at that in a year. Probably right around the time when Facebook apps were all the rage. Funny how quickly this social media world changes, huh?

Now iPhone apps, that's another story. Damn you Solitaire app!