An Ode to the Early Adopters of Social Marketing

I have a confession. I am not an “early adopter.” I said it out loud! I am NOT AN EARLY ADOPTER!!! I’m not sure WHAT to call myself, because professionally, I am a studier, predictor, strategy finder and lover of our early adopting friends. I know them, understand them and appreciate how they, as consumers of our client’s goods and services, keep us marketing types on our toes. They surprise us, and cause us to innovate. I “heart” them.

This group of trend setters has served as the engine behind the ever evolving discipline of social marketing. They have survived a million Google BETA tests and continue to be vocal when FaceBook screws up again. To them, I say, “Adopt on, my friends.” I’ll be watching, learning and once you have it all figure out, I’ll download the app.

For a more cerebral version of my “Ode to Social Marketing and the Early Adopters who we have to give thanks,” see the presentation below.

The Business of Sports

Yesterday’s DIG in Nashville was a special treat. My friend and client, Rob Bironas, was our special guest. Rob and I spent the 90 minutes talking about the business of football. We broke down the “org chart” of the NFL and even talked about how the athletes make money. Rob talked about the ins and outs of the “Franchise Tag” and about roster bonuses, but also about why he made the decision to handle his career with a plan in mind. Rob not only has a degree in Marketing from Auburn, but he understands that there is life after football. Check out his “Top 10 List” for insight into how he approaches his career and marketing his image.

March BG DIG: Marketing Planning 101

Oh, how I love to DIG in! Today’s content was about meat and potatoes. Obviously, not literally, about meat and potatoes, but when you live and breathe marketing planning for a living, teaching Marketing Planning 101 is my version of soul food. I shared the basic principles of marketing strategy and walked through the steps – one at a time. The group reviewed a sample marketing plan and chuckled together as they saw common pitfalls and road bumps and identified with them!

The takeaway? Marketing strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. As a matter of fact, the simplest strategies can be the most effective. If you do your homework, and plan tactics that fit your brand, you’re on your way to meeting you goals, and a big sense of satisfaction.

While I’ve given this presentation a few times, it has been given a few updates and a face-lift. Look below to review. And, use it as a resource for your own planning, and of course, call on us if you need a hand.

March Nashville DIG: Designing a Website to Integrate with Social Media

Whoa, baby. If you missed the 3.18 DIG with Rob Blackford, you really missed a heap of information!!

My introduction of Rob to the group of 40-something that came to participate involved words like “repeat offender entrepreneur” and “technical genius.” However, Rob is also one of my favorite people who happens to run a Nashville web and technology company called Design615. We work together weekly (sometimes daily), and our staffers lean on Rob for the times when pulling their hair out over technology or a web design issue isn’t the best option. Having a sharp brain behind the front of web design and development are vital, and he’s got just that.

Rob’s content walked the group through the old, the new, and a projection for the future of web design. With a participatory approach, each attendee filled in a worksheet with components of web history (like, how sites were built in 1997?) and current best practices. The group discussed social marketing tools, and how they affect how sites are put together. They even argued about the “best” content management system! Hello? Drupal? No – wait – proprietary – or Wordpress??

What we learned was that like most marketing tools that we tout at Werkshop, a great, current, social savvy site is best achieved with a plan/blueprint in mind. Ahhhh, strategy. Love it.

Holly

Click here to visit Rob’s site.

Handouts from presentation:

At Right Angles

Yesterday, Tim and I had the great opportunity to speak to the Bowling Green Professional Marketing Association. The presentation, “At Right Angles,” was about brand congruency. We discussed what “branding” really is, as well as how to approach branding by wearing the hat of a strategist.

We covered a lot of ground, but the moral of the story is that branding — and staying congruent in your message, tone, design and delivery — is a choice. Take a look at the presentation here.

Marketing and an Old House

Those close to me — actually, almost anyone that’s met me — know that over the past few years, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with tools. The idea of the “marketing toolbox” likely spurred from very literal (and neverending) experiences with tools as my husband and I fully renovated our home.

I live in a very old house. When we bought it in 2006, we knew it needed a lot of work, though we may have underestimated just how much work. Then the gas company showed up and turned off our gas line — not only did it need work, but it was dangerous! It was then that renovation (and some demolition) began.

Somewhere along the line, I saw the parallel between the process of fixing up our house (have you seen “The Money Pit”?) and the process business owners go through when marketing their businesses. Just like a home, a business needs constant maintenance. Sometimes, it even needs a complete renovation!

The core of our clients at Werkshop is made up of small businesses, with owners who steer the ship. As entrepreneurs, their business is their baby, and they’re generally emotional about it. So when it is time to grow, change or evolve, marketing suddenly becomes scary. Sometimes, in fact, the owner has been a part of the business for so long that strategic problems — much like our gas leak — come as a complete surprise!

That’s why we don’t just storm into the house and start tearing down walls — we first have to develop a plan. We evaluate the history of the business, then survey the industry’s landscape. And we find out lots of things this way. Is someone else utilizing the same (or similar) brand name? Has the competition started taking marketshare with a new pricing model?

We work with the business owner to show them that if we move a wall two feet this way (pricing), and update the plumbing (logo mark), that everything will make more sense, work better and become the home they once loved all over again. Over time, the rest of the plan can be put in to place, and the business owner’s goals become realities. And while it might not be cheap, it doesn’t have to be “The Money Pit,” either.

Four years into our home renovation — even though we may never quite be “done” — we’re loving our home. Likewise, I’m loving what it has taught me about small business.

Around here, it’s all in a day’s werk.

Building Werkshop (or “How We Learned to Practice What We Preach”)

Giving advice is easy… taking one’s own advice, however, is a little tougher.

Recently, I’ve taken a dose of my own medicine: For the first time in several years, I had to re-evaluate the marketing strategy for my own company. This was painful. The reason for the dose of self-prescribed marketing strategy was huge – Fresh Dirt was merging with a complementary company. The news was BIG — and we had to keep it a secret.

Wait… Let me backtrack.

Many people have asked Werkshop CEO Tim Earnhart and I how we met. The answer is that we didn’t, at least initially. Tim first met Jenn Sheets (Werkshop’s VP/Creative Director, who at the time was one of my Fresh Dirt team members) at an AAF Nashville meeting, and they struck up a conversation. When Jenn found that Tim owned a creative agency in nearby Bowling Green, Ky. — a boutique agency that could help our boutique strategy firm — she demanded that I sit still long enough to call Tim and introduce myself. Well, I did, and found that not only did we need the help of Earnhart + Friends’ creative geniuses, they were in need of a dose of strategy. It was a perfect match.

So after a few months of working in tandem (sharing clients, employees and processes with one another), Tim and I decided to tear down the walls — or, in other words, to get hitched. This not-so-simple decision was the beginning of the journey to a new name, a new brand, and opening the marketing toolbox to work on our own big project.

Since very few people outside the agencies knew what was going on, that made the process especially difficult. What did I learn? I learned to appreciate how personal marketing strategy can be to a business owner. Here are some thoughts from the journey toward the new brand.

When a marketing agency brands itself, it starts by looking inwardly. In all honesty, we subconsciously thought we were better than the strategic process that we tout so loudly, and attempted to immediately rename ourselves. (Bad marketers!) After many weeks and a half-dozen bad ideas, we settled on a name that we thought made sense. Tim and I then rolled out the name and brand design to our staff — without asking for their thoughts or getting their input — and soon realized we had made a big mistake. We were settling! The brand we’d come up with was internally focused, and that’s not what our company is about. But, like many of our new clients, the two of us basically worked in a vacuum; and, as always, the vacuum yielded poor results.

Thankfully, we realized our mistake soon enough to fix it, and took it as an opportunity to start over. This time, we brought in an external facilitator — a former Fresh Dirt client and one of the smartest marketing-process people I know — to walk us through our own strategic exercises. It was during that session that I realized how it felt to be my own client. I had many “aha!” moments that afternoon, and that “getting out of our own way” event allowed the E+F/FDM marriage to take a much stronger form.

We thought about our core business, about where we really provide value. We thought about what people say about us, to us, and how they engage. And we recommitted to putting the client first, opening up our vocabulary to explain the distinct set of services we can provide.

Our “use your tools wisely” mantra took hold. New yet natural language of “blueprints” and “building” and “foundations” bloomed. And the marketing toolbox that I ramble about so often found a home.

The tools, and the builders, now have a Werkshop — and every single one of us can see that we’re in a much stronger position because of it.

We say “Toolbox.” You say “What?” Let us explain.

At Werkshop, we talk about the Marketing Toolbox. To us, it’s as familiar as the alphabet, and what we pull out of it is different from client to client.

Many companies and small businesspeople come to us with tool malfunction. Agencies, experts or ad sales executives, offering a grab-bag of marketing tactics, led the client to choose a marketing tool without knowing what they were getting into. Now, they need guidance to fix the problem they inadvertently caused.

For example: Over lunch recently, a businessman told me about his experience with a traditional marketing tool, direct mail. He then proclaimed that it “no longer works.” You see, he and his partners had designed a postcard touting their business’s strengths, purchased a mailing list pulled the trigger — and were perplexed when they received not a single response. Clearly, the mailing was ineffective. But what I attempted to explain is that the mailing really couldn’t be effective — in fact, no marketing tactic is effective when undertaken without proper planning. Without a blueprint, the tool can’t be held responsible for its results!

The hammer is only as good as the person holding the nail. Without careful holding, the hammer will only beat the heck out of the object underneath of it! So I asked my lunch companion some questions, attempting to figure out why the mailing didn’t work. Was it the message? The art? When did it arrive in mailboxes? Did the mailing list meet targeted criteria? What did the project cost? And, most importantly, was the company’s expectations of the direct mail campaign legitimate?

He couldn’t really answer most of the questions — which is precisely the point! The lack of planning caught up with the company, and thus a potential opportunity was just wasted paper (and wasted money).

Each tool in the marketing toolbox has its place. Public relations, web communication, interactive media, mass advertising — the list is lengthy, but not every campaign requires every tool. Every tool, however, requires a focused, fine-tuned strategy in order to work the way it was intended.

AIGA Social Media Buzz

Thank you to everyone who came out the the AIGA Buzz this morning. This was the second time we have had the opportunity to have a Social Media discussion with a group and we continue to enjoy the contributions and questions from everyone! Many have requested the white paper that we handed out so we have posted it below for you to share and reference.

Remember that to “use your tools wisely” you need a plan! Keep the conversation going. We would love to hear your success stories as you dig deeper.