The Five Ps of Marketing

When I was in college, Intro to Marketing was taught from the marketing bible, Principles of Marketing, written by "the father of marketing", Dr. Philip Kotler. According to Dr. Kotler, the marketing mix was composed of the four Ps, a classification proposed in 1960 by E. Jerome McCarthy. As 40 years worth of marketing students can tell you, the four Ps are:

• Price
• Product
• Place
• Promotion

Dr. Kotler has released the 13th edition of Principles of Marketing (I know I'm dating myself, but my copy is the 7th edition), and we can see how quickly marketing is evolving to keep pace with changing customer expectations and new technologies emerging to both fuel and fulfill those expectations.

In recent years there has been discussion of adding a fifth P, and I've seen a multitude of possibilities proposed, including: Participation, Process, Physical Evidence, Passion, Post-Purchase Service and Perception. I don't see how the fifth P could be anything but People, and I'm surprised it has taken as long as it has to surface as a potential component of the marketing mix.  (There are some who would increase the number of marketing mix components to seven, but I'm not convinced it's needed.)

The birth, adoption and rapid growth of social networking has increased the relevance of People in the marketing mix significantly. I see that playing out in two ways:

1. People have always been the face and representation of your brand;service reps, sales people, clerks, waiters/waitresses, consultants, instructors, baristas, call center reps anyone with whom your customer has contact. And now, thanks to social networking, there is the expectation that to be credible, marketers can no longer hide behind impersonal mass media advertising, direct mail or email, but need to publicly self-identify as subject matter experts via blogs, web pages, social media pages, emails, Twitter, and videos to communicate personally with their current and potential customers. Customers are overwhelmed with and and ignoring advertising and traditional one-size-fits-all messages that bounce off into the ether unnoticed. In today's global and flat world where social networking connects us all, customers want to know who is behind the curtain, writing and sending those messages.
2. Customer testimonials have always been the most effective selling tool available and that hasn't changed. Social networking has elevated the importance of your customers talking to each other —  sharing opinions, recommendations, and experiences. As a marketer, you need to use your social networking tools to build communities of connected, communicating and satisfied customers. It's critical that you respond very quickly and publicly to complaints or issues to show that you are listening, responding, and resolving.

As you build you marketing plans for next year, remember to include your customers and yourself as the 5th P of the marketing mix. Your competitors won't forget.

Twitter for the Casual User — How to Make It Work for You

It's probably not surprising that I view and use Twitter as a business and professional communication tool, based on what I do for a living. It can clearly be advantageous to tweet professionally and/or about your business, as I wrote in a blog post a few months ago.

Recently I've been asked what value Twitter has to the more casual user — someone who's not promoting a business or using it professionally. Twitter is one of those experiences in life that is hard to explain (even though I'm going to give it a go here), but becomes amazingly clear once you understand the ground rules and try it out yourself.

At its most basic level, Twitter is a social networking channel. Because there is a 140 character limit, it's ideal for sharing small bites of information and links. Twitter's reputation — while not totally undeserved — as nothing more than the latest way for the self-absorbed to overshare the mundane details of their lives ignores how well it enables the communication of relevant information quickly and succinctly. Are there people tweeting about what they ate for breakfast and what color shirt they're wearing today? Most likely. A communication channel is only as good as the content filling it. Garbage in, garbage out still applies.

But when you ignore the garbage and focus on the "communication of relevant information quickly and succinctly" then that is when Twitter reveals its value. You can customize Twitter so that it delivers exactly the information you're interested in, and you never have to send a single tweet (40% of Twitter users don’t tweet every month but watch others tweet*). To create a road map through the approximately one billion tweets created every five days*, I've categorized tweets into six groups, with examples, to help new Twitter users navigate their way:

1. News
   Every media outlet tweets. Follow BBC World News, the New York Times, CNN, CBS News, or your favorite news source. Most magazines also tweet. Usually you'll get the headline and a link to an article if you're interested in finding out more.
2. Favorite celebrities, authors, actors, photographers, musicians or sports teams
   So many of them tweet. Anderson Cooper, Coldplay, Robert DeNiro, Annie Leibovitz, Maya Angelou or the San Jose Sharks hockey team are just a few examples. You can use the Who to Follow function in Twitter to search for the people or groups who interest you.
3. Elected representatives
   Members of Congress (Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren in my case), governors (Governor Jerry Brown in California) and even the President of the United States all tweet to communicate with their constituents.
4. Local businesses
   One of my favorite social networking success stories is about the catering trucks who tweet their locations so that their customers can find them. Mashable covered the trend in an article titled How Social Media Is Fueling the Food Truck Phenomenon. One example cited in the article, Kogi BBQ,  has 87,000 followers who follow five trucks.
   I can follow one of my favorite French restaurants, Left Bank, keep an eye out for sales and new merchandise at Nordstrom, or find out what local events are taking place with tweets from the San Jose Downtown Association.
5. Favorite causes or hobbies
   Whether it's disability advocacy, organic gardening, nature conservation, micro lending, running, hiking or trumpet playing, you will find someone who is tweeting about topics that interest you. A few examples include the Harvard Art Museums,Yosemite National Park, or Knitting Network where knitters share patterns and information.
6. Trending topics
   This is a daily Twitter feature that tracks the most frequently used hash tags. Including a hash tag in a tweet makes that tweet appear in topical searches, such as #Egypt, #Occupy or #accessibility.

And here's the amazing thing about Twitter. You choose how you want to use it. You can set it up as a simple feed, where tweets on the topics you're interested in come to you, via your computer, tablet or smart phone, or even as cell phone texts. Or, if you want to connect with others who have the same interests, Twitter can help you do that too. You can respond to that person who has the perfect non-toxic aphid spray and ask for the recipe. Or you can tell the governor that you are opposed to the bill she is poised to sign. (Twitter has a very good Basics page to tell you exactly how.)

With Twitter, you define your experience — engage as much or as little as you want, and as frequently or infrequently as you like.

* 11 New Twitter Statistics

Stuff IBMers Say — Following a # Conversation on Twitter

The last 24 hours have been a lot of fun and laughs tracking the IBM Twitter conversation about common IBM sayings, hashtagged #stuffibmerssay.

 The impressions were on their way toward a million (granted there are over 400,000 IBMers), several hours ago. I've shared the URL with a few friends, and no one was quite as amused by it as I was, lol. I'm not sure if you have to be an IBMer to really "get it", or if working for a large corporation would be sufficient.

Two things about the thousands of contributions really struck me:

1) I've not seen any metrics about this yet, but I would say there were more sayings about conference calls than about anything else — IBMers obviously spend a lot of time on the phone working on teams that are spread across countries and across the globe. (For instance, I only have one other teammate on the West Coast. The majority of my team are on EDT or CDT. I work early hours compared to most other Californians.) We participate on calls at all hours, and have a lot of common sayings. (I'm going to be self-conscious now every time I say, "Who's joined the call?" or "I was talking on mute", lol)

2) We use collaboration tools all of the time — we are eating our own Social Business cooking, as the saying goes. I hadn't realized how ubiquitous so many of them have become that we don't even think about how we use them daily. Communities, team rooms, status updates, expert locators, full function instant messaging where you can drop in a screen grab or file, pull other people into a conversation, instant web conferences, you name it. We use these social collaboration tools without even thinking about it any more.

At a glance, working for a company with 400,000+ employees spread around the world sounds large, intimidating, impersonal, distant. This Twitter conversation has shown me once again how social — social networking, social business, social collaboration — connects us all, personally.

Google+ Re-Invites Brands to the Party — Can You Hear Me Cheering?

The New York Times was one of many news sources reporting today that Google+ is now going to allow corporations to return to the social media network — the ones they kicked out earlier when Google+ was first launched.

Can you hear me cheering? No, I didn't think so.

Google+ currently has 40 million users compared to Facebook's 800 million. Brands have flocked to Facebook attracted by the fast-growing and active audience. (More than 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day, according to their fact page.)

As the New York Times article states:
"Relationships with Facebook have proved to be valuable marketing and awareness tools for companies with pages on that social network. Ninety-six of the top 100 brands have Facebook pages. The fast-food purveyor McDonald’s, for example, has over 11 million “likes” and 1.6 million visits to its page. Overall, about 100 million online stories, pictures and other things are “liked” by Facebook users daily."

Google, not surprisingly, would like a piece of that pie. As eMarketer reports:
"US Social Media Network ad revenues are expected to surpass $3.90 billion in 2012 and a large portion of that money is going straight to Facebook. New numbers show that Facebook will likely earn 72% of social media specific ad spending next year.  That’s equal to 7.9% of total online ad spending."

 Google is hoping their new Direct Connect feature taking advantage of Google search will be, if not the Facebook killer, at least the Facebook equalizer. As the Google blog post describes it:
"People search on Google billions of times a day, and very often, they're looking for businesses and brands. Today's launch of Google+ Pages can help people transform their queries into meaningful connections, so we're rolling out two ways to add pages to circles from Google search. The first is by including Google+ pages in search results, and the second is a new feature called Direct Connect. Maybe you're watching a movie trailer, or you just heard that your favorite band is coming to town. In both cases you want to connect with them right now, and Direct Connect makes it easy—even automatic."

So am I ready to create a Google+ business-to-business page? No, not yet. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn keep me busy enough, and we are seeing results with relationships happening and communities being built. Google appears to be focusing first on the consumer market, and is going to have do a much better job of selling me on the advantages of their network for me to support it with scarce resources — my time.

How Do You Get Your News Today?

I'm amazed by the speed in which the announcement of Ginny Rometti succeeding Sam Palmisano in January 2012 as IBM's president and CEO hit the Twitterverse. I saw the first tweets by IBMers Kathy Mandelstein (@katmandelstein) and Jon Iwata (@coastw) at 1:19 pm PDT in my hourly Twitter scan. They linked directly to the IBM announcement: Virginia M. Rometty elected IBM president and CEO. Minutes later, the New York Times followed with an article, and Fortune, CNET, Mashable, TechCrunch, etc. followed with tweets.

Now granted, I am an IBMer, so obviously I'm very interested in news about IBM. But it made me realize again just how much of my news I get on Twitter and Facebook these days. I found about the death of Steve Jobs and the East Coast earthquake on Facebook. The Japan earthquake and tsunami and Egyptian revolution news came via Twitter. The earthquake in Turkey and Netflix's series of mistakes — from Facebook.

When social networking first grabbed my attention two and a half years ago, I was excited about the potential. I wasn't farsighted enough to see where it could go, but knew it was going somewhere, and it did tie in with my enjoyment of reading science fiction partly because I love the creativity and imagination authors employ to describe how everything, including communications, will continue to evolve and be used in the future. (Small side note: I recently discovered Peter F. Hamilton's work and am working my way through his Void trilogy after finishing the Commonwealth Saga. It's amazing (and a little scary) how easily you can see current social networking evolving into the Unisphere.)

I'm not alone in getting my news from the social networking channel. According to the latest Pew Study on Media Attitudes, 1985 - 2011:
Social networking has expanded the ways in which the public gets news and information. About a quarter (27%) of adults say they regularly or sometimes get news or news headlines through Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites. This rises to 38% of people younger than 30, but now spans a notable share of older Americans (12% of those 65 and older) as well. ... And when asked to describe what they like about getting news over social networks and Twitter, answers range from features of the technology such as speed, portability and brevity to ways in which the content is more customized, personal and topical.

When you compare the statistics from three years earlier, Pew Study on Media Attitudes, 1985 - 2008, you can see how the "news from social networking" questions have evolved, since this was the only conclusion:
Social networking sites are very popular with young people, but they have not become a major source of news. Just 10% of those with social networking profiles say they regularly get news from these sites.

Will getting your news via social networking replace more traditional channels like television, newspapers and magazines?  Supplement, yes. Replace? Clearly not in the immediate future. But as the participants in the 2011 Pew Study reported, customization, personalization and topicality are growing more important to us in this flatter, networked world, and social networking does all three of those very well. :-)

Image: nuttakit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Vacations, Prioritization & Social Media

I'm one of those people who, as much as I want to go and need to go on vacation, have a self-inflicted excruciatingly painful week before I go.

On Sunday, I start planning my week and creating a long list of all of things I have to get done, both at work and at home. Last Sunday, my master to-do list looked something like this:

• Facebook Expert Hour invitation
• New hero spot started
• Mobile app article reviewed, signed off & delivered
• Meet w/ Fran to hand over social media reins
• MCE page
• Pedicure
• Cat food
• Mop kitchen floor
• Pack....

You get the picture. A list of what I can realistically complete only with 33 hour days this week and no sleep.

By Tuesday, I'm beginning to panic. Meetings get added to my calendar. I spend hours on hold with the insurance company. The list is getting longer, not shorter. One to-do gets completed and crossed off, but five new ones are added. Plus two committee meetings that I can't miss this week. I'm working until midnight almost every night. I have trouble getting to sleep because my brain won't stop churning away, and I refuse to get up and work more.

And now all of a sudden it's Friday. I'll be on the plane in less than 24 hours. And it all becomes clear. I CANNOT get it all done. No one can. It was an impossible list to begin with, and I was setting myself up for failure to think it could all get done. And as that moment of truth dawns, I relax, and begin to prioritize. This task and that one really can wait until I get back. My colleague can manage this one. My web producer can text me when this one is done. One of the kids can mop.

And it makes me realize how important prioritization is to social media channels. My main ones, for now, are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I'm flirting with Google+ and Tumblr and StumbleUpon and YouTube and Pinterest, and have some new ones bookmarked for further investigation. And while it's important to test these new ones out, and perhaps integrate them into my overall social media mix, it's not critical that it happens right now, this week.  The week I'm back will be fine. When you're spread too thin, and try to take too much on, either you won't get it all done, or if by some miracle you do, it won't be your best work.

Prioritize. What a lovely word, releasing me. Aloha. :-)

The Demise of Blogging — Fact or Fallacy?

I slept in yesterday, and deciding to take advantage of my unusual, but obviously much-needed Saturday of leisure, I spent some time digging around about blogs.

I'm a fairly new blogger who only this summer realized that I had things I could and wanted to say about social networking. What started out as a (successful) experiment at work — using social media channels to start conversations about accessibility and build communities — quickly became a personal passion where I'm energized about social networking's potential for personalizing the connections and interactions of our ever more automated and global world.

No, I'm not this bad yet. But it's early still. :-)

 So I started my loosely defined investigation at BlogHer, a blogging site recommended by a colleague and fellow blogger who's been very supportive and helpful with my foray into blogging (Thank you, Laura!). I follow BlogHer on Facebook, so I stay current on featured blogs and topics. BlogHer is a social networking success story. Three women started the site in 2005 in response to the question, “Where are all the women bloggers?” They now have 50 employees supporting 27 million unique visitors a month who visit the site, 2,500 network bloggers, and a free-to-join directory of 22,000 registered private blogs. It's a vital and thriving community, where questions are asked and answered, and new knowledge and insight are gained daily. (And yes, my blog is one of those 22,000, lol.)

Then I started searching for blog directories where I could register my blog, and that's when I realized — there are hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of blog directories out there. Some of them are upfront about their commercial purpose — they want several hundred dollars a year from you to list your blog in their directory (sorry, not happening any time soon guys.). But many of them will take a reciprocal link as payment, so I'm testing out a few of those.

My search led me to wonder just how many people are blogging? I've read articles over the past couple of years that claim blogging is dying, but then I look at the success of Huffington Post and find that hard to believe. (Started in 2005 for an investment of $1 million by Ariana Huffington, HuffPost, as it's known, was purchased by AOL in the spring of 2011 for $315 million dollars).

A little more digging (thank you, Google), and I found this illuminating blog post, Are Blogs Growing or Dying? by Oklahoma City University Professor Kenna Griffin. Professor Griffin spent some time analyzing the report, Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2010, and she came to this conclusion:

In 2011, there are millions of blogs in the blogosphere, with nearly 1.3 million blogs registered on Technorati alone.

Make no mistake, there still are personal blogs, with arguably the fastest growing blogging segment being Mommy Bloggers. But many of today’s blogs are corporate, organizational or niche, with a fair number of blogs acting as the sole storefront for entrepreneurs.

And a quick peek at Wikipedia confirms Professor Griffin's conclusion: As of 16 February 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence.

Maybe I should have added blogs to my list of everyday categories of items where the choices are staggering in an earlier blog post, Overwhelmed by Choices — How Social Networking Can Help, Part 1.

And so, with a hat tip to the brilliant and witty Mark Twain, I'm happy to conclude that, "The reports of blogging's death are greatly exaggerated."