How Small Business Can Get Social

Posted on September 30, 2013 by

pc_facebookWhen the decision is made to advertise their goods or services, most local businesses wouldn’t think of renting a video camera and studio and producing their own TV commercials. (At least, we hope not.) However, if they decide they’re Steven Spielberg and do it themselves, the results are predictably bad.

We’ve all seen the poorly lit, poorly written local spots which feature the hyperventilating owner of the business screaming at us to “come on down!” It’s not pretty and it actually does more harm than good for the company trying to save a few bucks on production. Even a small company should budget for some degree of assistance from a professional ad agency or, at the very least, should seek out a reputable video or audio production company for these spots.

However, when it comes to social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Pinterest, most small-businesses owners delegate this marketing task to someone in-house who has no training or worse – they try and do it themselves. If a recent survey is accurate, these over-worked entrepreneurs don’t WANT to manage social media, they just feel they have no alternative.

A Survey of Small Businesses
According to a June 2013 survey conducted by the well-known email service Constant Contact, small business owners would like help managing their social media marketing but many feel they cannot afford it. The survey of 1,305 small-business owners found that in terms of marketing priorities, social media loses out to more established local advertising media such as radio and television.

The results showed 19 percent of the small-business owners would like to outsource social media, but only 3 percent are actually able to do so. This compares to 40 percent who outsource TV and radio ads, 35 percent who outsource search engine optimization, 23 percent who outsource banner ads, 22 percent who outsource their website management and 20 percent who outsource local print advertising.

A previous survey by Constant Contact found that 80 percent of small-business owners are using social media marketing and more than half of this group said it’s the marketing activity they need the most help with. So what? Who really cares whether small business makes it or not? Actually, we should all be rooting for the home team – local small businesses –and here’s why.

Is Small Business Really Important?
According to Entrepreneur magazine, there are between 25 million and 27 million small businesses in the U.S. and they account for 60 to 80 percent of all jobs in this country. That is an amazing statistic. It means the investments, revenue and payrolls of small businesses dramatically affect every other sector of the economy.

Small businesses are also important for new product development. A study by the payroll company “Paychex” says small businesses produce 13 times more patents than larger firms. Anyone who starts and runs a small business intuitively understands this phenomenon. When you’re small and scrappy, you have to innovate or perish. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started their enormously successful electronics company as the smallest of businesses in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California.

social marketing 2Social Media and Small Business
You may have heard the “long tail of the Internet” has changed everything for small businesses. This phrase, coined by Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson, means that huge inventories (and capital investment) are no longer needed because products and parts – even the most specialized – needed by small businesses, are quickly available on a just-in-time basis. This “long tail” is also in evidence with social media as it is used to find new customers.

Well-known marketing guru, Seth Godin noted in his blog that there have been 3 types of businesses in history. The “geography-based” business (think McDonald’s) is real-estate driven – the business must be in the right place to succeed. The “commodity-based” business is successful when it sells a wide range of commodities that are priced cheaper than anyone else. The third type is the “community-based” business. It’s the most difficult to build, but is the most stable after its built.

Godin notes, “Community-based businesses tell stories. They create remarkable products. They sync up their tribe. They happily surrender market share to commodity sellers – if it’s a lower price you want, good luck to you.” This community-based business model is overwhelmingly used by small business and it lives and breathes on social marketing.

Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Yelp and any number of others are all highly personalized media which motivate and inspire new customers to try a small-business product.  This means a positive or a negative opinion, review or offhanded remark can exponentially spread – almost immediately – by a social network.

This is a very powerful tool – for both good and harm – and should not be handled by the part-time teenager who comes in on Thursday to run errands. Having the owner of the business manage the social media is also a problem because it requires expertise and time in order to understand the mechanisms and keep current on the subject-matter of the network. Time is precious to a small-business owner .

Want proof of how quickly social network marketing can change? In just one week, September 16 – 22, 2013,  the  newsletter Social Media Examiner noted the following changes:

  • Pinterest to test promoted pins – This might have dramatic impact on companies that sell female-oriented products and services.
  • Facebook tests an easier way to watch videos – The largest social network on the planet is tinkering with video posts and this could impact companies with video-centric messages or products.
  • Facebook redesigns mobile app – Customers are accessing the web and social network via mobile, and Facebook is adapting to the new iOS 7.
  • Twitter introduces a new mobile app – See Facebook above
  • Tumblr adds push notifications – blogging is a great way to build customer engagement and sales and Tumblr is an excellent platform.

These changes happened in one week. Imagine how radically these media change in a month or a quarter.

Social marketing
Get Started
If you own or run a small business, you must surely feel that the odds are stacked against you. Well, you’re right. They are. However, getting better at something as seemingly complicated as social media marketing can change those odds.

Social media marketing is the perfect tool for small business guerilla marketing and with a little investment, big returns in the form of customer engagement and sales are possible. Here are eight simple things you can do today to improve your social network marketing.

  • Realize that kids move on to the next shiny object LONG before you do and this is especially true for social networks. Unless you have a product or service that is designed for teenagers or college-aged kids, don’t base your decision on which social nets to use on them. Talk to your target audience. What social networks do they use?
  • Sit down with your team and decide three objectives for your social media marketing. This is more difficult than it sounds, but it’s a critical step. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. When you decide these objectives, write them down and base your planning on them.
  • Customer engagement for business-to-business products and services are better made on LinkedIn or YouTube than Facebook. Invest 10 minutes in starting a LinkedIn page, join a few groups that are focused on your industry and begin posting information and articles that you would find interesting. Dividends will occur when other businesses see your posts and put you on their mental “short list.”
  • Because of its huge base, Facebook and Twitter are great for consumer products and services. Facebook has recently changed its policy for consumer contests and these new rules allow for a wide range of free promotions which can ultimately drive revenue. Consult an expert on social marketing or spend some time looking over the guidelines from Facebook.
  • Don’t think of social media in the traditional sense of other media. It’s not just another megaphone for you to broadcast your weekly deals and specials (although this “deal offering” promotion can be a part of a social media strategy). It is a way for you to ask questions and engage your customers, make them into friends and then share news about your business with these new friends. If your social site is only about those things your business has on sale, it will attract some bargain shoppers but it will not help you build and engage a community for the long haul.
  • Begin reading the best social network marketing newsletters. A good one is the one noted above – Social Media Examiner  and Convince & Convert. Both are free.
  • Join local social media organizations where you can freely discuss your situation and get others in the group to offer suggestions.
  • Ask a social media consultant or advertising agency which handles social media marketing for an estimate (hourly or project basis) in evaluating your current social network strategy, design of pages, objectives and tactics. They can train someone on your team to use effective social tactics. You will likely be surprised by the return on this investment.

What’s Your Social Network Marketing Costing You?
There are literally thousands of other tactics which can be used by small businesses to get a good return on investment from social marketing. It starts with a commitment of the owner or management of the company and that usually involves the allocation of resources.

In the Constant Contact survey noted at the outset of this discussion, small-business owners were asked to calculate the value of an hour of their own labor. The average rate the owners returned was $273 per hour. If you own a small business, how much money would you save by having an expert handle your social network marketing, or training a member of your team to do so? How much revenue would be generated if you handed off the social marketing duties to someone who knows the difference between a LIKE and a Tweet and has the time to take advantage of this knowledge?

Do you have questions about social media? Shoot us an email or give us a call.

Posted in Advertising, Design, Marketing, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Eyes Have It

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Prejean Creative

imgres-3It turns out that the message of the movie The Minority Report was prescient. You might remember the scene where Captain John Anderton (Tom Cruise) was quickly walking through the shopping mall of the future while personalized ads – from beer to boxers – were catching his eyes. If not, just scroll below for the clip.

The developers and purveyors of digital media – websites, social networks, search media, email and others – have long boasted that this media has the ultimate benefit over traditional media such as newspapers, outdoor, radio and television: the audience analytics allow it to be quantifiable. The argument goes that analytical tools such as Google Analytics and other, more sophisticated tools can get an accurate count of the number and behavior of consumers who engage with this media and this precision is not possible with traditional media.  The digerati have claimed – ad nauseam – “if it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed.”

This is a very compelling argument for ad agencies like Prejean Creative. We must investigate the benefit vs. cost, reach vs. frequency and the ying vs. yang of digital vs. traditional media every day. However, this analytic advantage of digital media over traditional media could change if digital behemoth Google develops a new advertising audience tracking tool.

Don’t look now but those intrepid Googlers have been hard at work in their secret laboratory again. They’ve received another patent that could change the world of advertising and this was reported a couple of weeks ago in science and technology website Phys.org.

In the near or distant future – depending on the decision of Google – advertisers might be adding more hyphenated phrases to their lexicon. To the group of “Pay-per” phrases such pay-per-view or pay-per-click, we could be adding pay-per-gaze. Here’s why.

Accurately Measuring Media’s Impact
John Wanamaker, a 19th century retail pioneer from Philadelphia, is credited with coining the phrase still used by 21st century marketing directors. Wanamaker famously noted, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half!” Even the pioneers of advertising were trying to figure out how many and who was consuming their ads.

Advertising trade publication, MarketingWeek, noted, “Google has been granted a set of patents for eye-tracking advertising technology, which could detect when a person is looking at an advert – be it online or offline – and infer their emotional response to it.”

How will this tracking work? No one is really saying yet, but the Phys.org article suggests the tracking technique, based on the “gaze,” could be implemented with a head-mounted device, such as Google Glass. Obviously, it would be no coincidence for the multibillion dollar Google to incorporate an existing, albeit nascent technology, in another service. That’s how they got to be a multibillion dollar company.

google-glass-product-2013-46_460-1Once the “gaze” of an ad occurs, the tracking mechanism could communicate this action to a server, allowing Google to create “pay-per-gaze” that would register whether an individual has looked at an ad before charging the brand. This is similar to “cost-per-click”. The MarketingWeek and Phys.org articles note the technology could infer “emotional state information” by measuring a user’s pupil dilation. This aspect of the technology could pose a teeny, tiny problem.

Using pupil dilation to gauge emotional responses has been seen as problematic by academics and neuro-ad geeks in the past. One of these nay-sayers, Mihkel Jaatman, commented on the news by saying, “Polluting factors such as sounds or changes in light affect pupil dilation too much to properly isolate people’s reactions to ads. While pupil dilation could work in a lab, with a closed door, perfect lighting and nobody making noise, it’s almost impossible to measure in a real-world setting.” Google will have to work this problem out, but fortunately for them, they have plenty of cash and smart people wandering around to do this.

This tracking tool also presents yet another privacy problem for the world’s biggest search engine. However, the patent notes “an individual’s privacy would be protected by the removal of personal identifying data – which would also be encrypted – so advertisers would only be provided anonymous analytics.” The patent also suggests it could offer users opt-in or opt-out privileges, to control the type of data being gathered and to whom it might be shared.

We’re Going to Need a New Acronym
Clearly, this technology is not ready for use by any advertising agency’s media department. It may take decades to work out the logistic challenges noted above and even if this occurs, the Google gaze technology may find its niche in marketing research environment – similar to focus groups – rather than being used as we scan magazines or recording our responses to billboards.

In fact, analytics from pay-per-gaze may never show up in the Prejean Creative media buyer’s in-box. A Google spokesperson noted, “We hold patents on a variety of ideas. Some of these ideas later mature into real products or services, some don’t.”

However, if the bugs are worked out on this little bit of intellectual property, it will forever change the way traditional advertising is measured. It would also extend Google’s online/digital advertising business into more old-school media such as newspapers, outdoor and magazines. Time will tell if this pay-per-gaze, or pay-per-peek, as some are calling this technology, comes to fruition.

If, however, it becomes a part of the media buyer’s tool kit, these data denizens will have to invent some kind of snappy acronym to call it. CPM is taken and GRP is already being used. We like PPG – point-per-gaze. What do you think an appropriate acronym should be? Comment below.

Posted in Advertising, Digital Design, Marketing, Miscellaneous, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Are You Ready for Some Brand Extensions?

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Prejean Creative

A New Saints Ring BfIn a couple of weeks, one of the most successful sports leagues in history will kick off another year. A recent Forbes magazine article about the National Football League notes that “The NFL’s 32 teams are worth, on average, $1.17 billion (each).” This compares to the world’s top 20 soccer teams’ worth of $968 million, the average worth of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams at $744 million and average values for the NBA teams of $509 million.

Aside from the extremely lucrative TV deals, the teams of the NFL realize substantial revenue from the sale of licensed merchandise, which can include anything from t-shirts to toilet tissue with the team’s logo prominently affixed. Best guesstimates on sales figures for this merch are north of $3 billion each year.

The NFL brand is so strong and so popular that even missteps from the commissioner – from the questionable “Bountygate” penalties to rule changes which erode the foundation of the game – fail to tarnish its polished image. Making this well-oiled machine continue to print money requires a lot of people. The staff of NFL Properties is composed of hundreds of marketers, licensing experts and more than a few attorneys. It works with its board of directors, the owners of the 32 teams, to rigorously maintain the integrity and uniformity of the NFL brand. Why? This brand has some of the best-known logos, mascots and merchandise on the planet and the league wants this cash cow to remain pristine.

However, managing a brand can be a tricky thing, especially when this involves a group of customers – the NFL fans – who are the most outrageous, passionate and loony renegades in the world. You think herding cats is tough? How about keeping crazy NFL fans (who have paid a lot of money to be in the stands) from doing whatever they want to do with their favorite team’s brand? Good luck with that.

Thinking about this tendency of football fans to mold their favorite team’s image into their own, quirky world caused senior art director at Prejean Creative, Gary LoBue, Jr., to scratch his chin and wonder: Is this tendency of fans (especially those with a penchant for exhibitionism) to go a little crazy on NFL Sundays a good thing or bad thing in terms of team branding? This philosophical ad guy further speculated that this fan interaction with their team could be seen as a very effective brand extension. More on that later.

What is a Brand?
One of the best definitions for the term brand, comes from marketing savant Seth Godin. In one of his daily blogs from December, 2009, he noted: A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.

The NFL and its 32 teams are replete with memories, stories and expectations. If one follows professional football for any length of time, these three elements of its brand, plus dozens of additional factors become integral to being a fan. Maybe it was due to brilliant marketing or (more likely) to serendipity or both, but the NFL brand has evolved into an entity that inspires extreme passion among its fans. This passion can sometimes explode in very creative ways.

Who Dat?
Kevin Prejean, one of the two people whose name is on the door of Prejean Creative, answered our question about what motivated fans to “repurpose” NFL team brands with a trip down memory lane. “Gary and I are old enough to have been around when the Saints first came to New Orleans. In 1967, this team was like a lot of expansion teams – pretty awful. Hey, 20 years passed before they had their first winning season and the team went 33 years before their first playoff win! My loyalty was truly tested. However, as I grew up and lived through horrible seasons, as well as the amazing years, I became a fan of the team. Like every fan, I’ve grown to identify with my team.”

Kevin’s devotion to the New Orleans Saints is revealed by his status as a season ticket holder for the past 8 years. Every Sunday home game, he and thousands of other Saints fans witness what LoBue calls “brand extension.”

The black and gold of the Saints, its fleur-de-lis logo, the biblical characters (remember, they ARE the Saints), current affairs, animated superheroes and a menagerie of other characters are all on display at the game and add a particularly South Louisiana flavor to the spectacle on the field. Some of the favorite Saints fan characters have been:

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Even the world-famous, catch-all description of Saints fans – Who Dat? – was fan-inspired and not hatched up by a bunch of creative types at the NFL or New Orleans. This brand extension became so popular, there was rumbling that some NFL executives wanted to officially license it and force anyone who used it to pay the league a royalty. This was, of course, nonsense and cooler (less rapacious) heads prevailed.

The Saints are not the only NFL team whose fans have extended the brand. Anyone who’s ever watched the Washington Redskins knows about the guys wearing women’s dresses and pig masks – aka The Hogettes. Cleveland has its Dawgs and they even keep them in the Dawg Pound at the stadium. The Green Bay Packers are found in the state of Wisconsin and rather than extend the team’s brand (meat packers?) the fans wisely chose to call themselves Cheeseheads and proudly wear hats that look like a large slice of cheese.

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Are These Brand Extensions a Good Thing or Bad Thing?
Ultimately, an NFL team is like any business. It must attract customers and keep them happy by winning more than it loses. To continue this business analogy, everyone agrees that successful branding can help instill customer/fan loyalty. But what about the weird brand extensions of NFL fans? Does this help build support for the team?

We went back to the guy who started this NFL brand extension discussion in the first place. Gary LoBue notes, “These crazy fan extensions of the team’s brand most assuredly help the team build loyalty. Every business endeavor hopes to build a tribe of loyal customers. In the case of these off-the-wall fan variations in the NFL, the tribe has simply taken over!”

As we get ready to tee-up the 2013-2014 NFL season, this is a good time to get those giant “We’re Number 1” Styrofoam fingers and your favorite team-colored costumes out of storage and get psyched for the long, challenging season ahead. The boys on the field can’t do it without us, so let’s get those brand extension ideas ready to roll!

Posted in Branding, Fun Stuff, Louisiana, Marketing, Miscellaneous, Popular Culture, Promotions | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Thanks for everything, Rob Guidry!

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Lisa Prejean

clear_22Thanks, Rob Guidry

Over the past 35 years, our community has experienced many positive changes, putting Lafayette at the top of some of the business world’s “best of” lists. As the leader of the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce during this time, Rob Guidry has played a huge role in those accomplishments. Rob, we appreciate your vision, dedication and hard work on behalf of Lafayette and Acadiana. Best wishes as you retire and embark on new adventures.

Posted in Fun Stuff, Good Deeds, Lafayette, Miscellaneous | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Lessons Learned from Shark Week – How Social Media Can Add New Life to an Aging Campaign

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Prejean Creative

IMG_8239We are in the middle of a once-a-year phenomenon this week. It’s Shark Week. The Discovery Channel has celebrated Shark Week, an annual marathon of shark documentaries, for 26 years and it has been, well, AWESOME.

If you haven’t dived into this addicting series, then get yourself in front of a television tonight. It can’t be explained, it has to be seen. So what’s all the hype about when it comes to this week and sharks? Why are people so amazed by the most feared water predator? That’s part of the mystery – no one knows!

With more than 80 unprovoked attacks worldwide last year, these deadly creatures are nothing to laugh about. The truth is that our knowledge of this elusive creature is limited because of how difficult it is to research a shark while in captivity; they have different behaviors and don’t live very long because of the stress from this confinement. This animal is accustomed to roaming freely throughout the planet’s oceans, not being kept in a tank. In fact, researchers are discovering new species of sharks every day, that’s how elusive they are.

So what marketing lessons can be learned from Shark Week and The Discovery Channel? Well, the folks driving the Shark Week boat are aware of the spell sharks have on us and have always had great success with it. However, unlike most campaigns, which usually have a short shelf life, Shark Week has defied the odds. It can be difficult to pump out new, refreshing ideas to create customer engagement, but Shark Week has brought energy to the end of summer for as long as we can remember with new facts and research. And just like sharks have had to adapt their feeding tactics because of scarce food, the folks at Discovery have adapted their promotional tactics by heavily incorporating social media into their marketing strategy.

SharkWeek_NYCTraditional advertising, through commercials, is still in heavy rotation, especially this year with the new mascot, Snuffy the Seal, who unfortunately met his untimely death at the jaws of a great white. That commercial laid the groundwork for a “Save Snuffy” campaign on Facebook which has more than 2,000 “likes” and helps drive traffic back to the Discovery website. However, new efforts focused on social media networks, such as Twitter, and video apps, such as Vine, have definitely taken off.  Engagement went through the roof in 2012 with more than 1.7 million mentions of Shark Week on Twitter, which was due to the #sharkweek hashtag found on-screen during programming.

Even other brands, such as The Weather Channel, Volkswagen USA and Tide have attached themselves to Shark Week in a bid to increase their own customer engagement. Each has a Vine account that has their own shark creative and they can be quite entertaining. The lesson learned here is, just when you think that your advertising campaign may be losing steam, try reshuffling your focus to a social media strategy. By creating a social media campaign, Discovery has significantly increased customer engagement through “likes,” commenting and sharing, and ensured the future success of Shark Week.

If your marketing could use a refresh, take a look at social media as a way to re-engage with your customers. Today’s customers are checking their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles as a natural part of their daily routines. In fact, many are checking their profiles multiple times throughout the day.  If your organization isn’t yet active on social media and needs a jump start, that’s what we’re here for. We can provide you with social media marketing strategies that will connect your business with current and new customers, and create new business opportunities.

Reinvigorating a marketing campaign takes a great business strategy that is open to evolving, just like the sharks and the Discovery Channel have had to do. So what are you waiting for? Dive into social media marketing today.

Posted in Advertising, Fun Stuff, Marketing, Miscellaneous, Popular Culture, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment