Digital Marketing - One Marketing

Defining social media consumers - demographics or psychographics?

Mar 212011

It can be a struggle getting to grips with social media profiles. Much of the information available tries to classify users with broad, demographic classifications, but as the medium is ‘social’, when we try to square these statements with our personal experience, we find too many instances where they do not ring true.
For people working with brands and communications, understanding social consumers is vital. Social media is about the most personal and direct relationships, but as brand marketers recognised their importance, many reverted (understandably) to old models of broad profiling. The truth is that social consumers do not fit neatly into demographic alignments: they are better defined by psychographics.

Psychographics classify audiences and consumers by shared values and attitudes. This instantly makes more ecological sense than demographics. Early proponents of psychographics included Young & Rubicam, identifying consumers as succeeders, reformers, aspirers and main streamers. With new technology came another set of definitions including ‘early adopters’ etc. Today, we see dozens of agencies coming up with their own ‘new’ psychographic definitions. It might be good to have one universally accepted set of standards, this would certainly simplify the job of researchers and social media owners, but perhaps that is missing the point. Each market, and indeed each company could usefully identify its own set of profiles. Shoe-horning consumers into a set of standards that suit agencies and media owners could end up as unhelpful as standard demographics.

Brand archetyping has proved a useful discipline, so long as it does not degenerate into brand stereotyping. Let us not let the richness available through thoughtful and imaginative psychographics slide into atrophying dogma.

How social media supports sustainable marketing

Digital Marketing 2 Responses »

Feb 242011

By using digital and social media you can help your marketing be more sustainable. What do we mean by ‘sustainable marketing‘? Well I like to take the old four ‘P’s of marketing (yes, I know some people are up to around 11 ‘P’s, but let’s keep it simple!), and onto them map the four ‘E’s of sustainable marketing:

Ecology
Economy
Ethnology
Ethics

Let’s consider social and digital media in terms of the four Es:

Ecology – Social media is extremely green when compared to the alternative communications and networking activities. Firstly, we don’t need to use any materials. No letters, flyers or press releases; no print to be distributed, and thus no fuel costs or carbon output. Then you do your networking without travelling. Again, this means reduced pollution – as Arthur C Clarke said, around 40 years ago, “Don’t commute – communicate.”

Economy – It is important to be economically sustainable. Again, social media ticks the boxes. So far as social media is virtually free and it is involved in knowledge transfer and dissemination, it is economically viable in virtually all economies across the globe. Barriers to entry are extremely low, requiring little more than access to the Internet or a mobile ‘phone. People working close to their homes can also help support the micro economies of their immediate region rather than the big cities.

Ethnology – Marketing needs to be sustainable in terms of supporting people, cultures and societies. Social media with its open transfer of knowledge allows us to broaden our understanding of the peoples we are dealing with, and to be sensitive to their cultural needs. This is perhaps one area where digital, social communications need to be carefully considered. The enormous reach of these powerful tools means that if used without care and consideration they could be damaging individual populations.

Consider an annual conference or seminar that may be part of your marketing plan. In order to be ‘sustainable’ you decide that this year you will mount an online webinar instead. No travel for delegates, no carbon emissions, no materials to produce, no waste to recycle from the venue, no heating or lighting for the hall. But what about the impact upon the people in the community where your event was to be held? No jobs this year, no input for the local economy. The four’ E’s need careful weighing to secure the best possible balance.

Ethics – All marketing should be ethical, but such normative goals are not always attained. We are all aware of unethical marketing activities, sadly they are a fact of life. Fortunately, such practices are rarely sustainable being based upon short term greed. Digital marketing, in its broadest sense, has plenty of examples of unethical practices, but I am encouraged by a more positive spirit in social media. Because it is self-regulating and democratic, and if you believe that most people in the world are well intentioned, the many should mediate the few.

Digital, social media does not automatically tick all the boxes, but for organizations committed to sustainable marketing it provides a useful toll that should be carefully considered. So, when creating marketing plans or campaigns, consider the four ‘E’s and assess how social media can be applied to support those goals.

Does mobile mean the mouse is an endangered species?

Digital Marketing No Responses »

Jan 242011

Back in the early 80′s, computers started to appear with a small plastic interface device connected by a cable – the device was called a mouse and the computer was the Apple Macintosh.

I remember installing the first machines in the design company I was running at the time and watching a designer gripping the mouse with two white knuckled hands as she moved a text box across the tiny screen, as though terrified of dropping it. Now, after over two decades of ubiquity have we found a successful mousetrap? Will touchscreens and mobile devices see the final demise of the small rodents that have served us so well?

Obviously there are some tasks for which the mouse (or similar devices) is ideally suited. But watching people with their first touch-phone or tablet PC, you cannot fail to be impressed by how quickly they adapt and how intuitive the interface is. I’ve just been doing some music production using a DAW on an iPad and it is a joy!

But if touch-screen technology does advance in popularity, what will that mean for production of digital media and communications? I would advise anybody with a traditional website to access it via an iPhone or Android and see how well it works. Menus and drop-downs need seriously considering if they are to be convenient to use and a new mind-set needs to be considered. Of course, mobile developers have been telling us this for some time, but now these considerations are moving beyond the realm of the tiny mobile screen and will be influencing how we build for wider applications. Perhaps we will finally see the death of the ‘click here’ request. The DAW I was working on had keys, buttons, sliders and knobs, just like physical controls, and I can see the ergonomics and cybernetics as applied to such controls on hardware being the source of usability on ‘soft’ digital media.

I wonder what will be the last message my mouse delivers to my screen – ‘Goodbye, and thanks for all the cheese?’

Social Media is as easy as ABC

Digital Marketing No Responses »

Jan 172011

Well, nothing worthwhile is easy, but there are three points to bear in mind for successful social networking and they can be summed up as A,B, and C.

Audience
Behaviour
Content

Audience

It is vitally important to know who your audience is. This determines not just what you say to them, but how you say it. First things first – who are you talking to? It is very easy to get caught up in the social media whirl and just be talking to the world at large. This can be very wasteful on your very valuable time. It also dictates the media you employ. MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, for example, all have different audiences. Imagine the people you want to speak to – not just an amorphous group, but imagine the actual people, then match them to the media. Once you have them clearly in your mind, not only will the media become obvious, but also the language you will use to communicate.

Behaviour

Behaviourism is a branch of psychology which looks at how people behave in response to stimuli, rather than what is going on inside their mind. One way we can apply this is to look at another ABC – Antecedent, Behaviour and Consequence.

The antecedent is something that happens before the behaviour – in this case it can be a blog article you post or a tweet, or some other action. The behaviour is what somebody reading that does. They may comment, re-tweet or respond in some other way. When they behave in whatever way, there should be a consequence – something should happen. If something good happens, a response or a number of replies, or a discussion starts – hopefully they will be pleased and look forward to repeating the behaviour. They will look out for your posts or subscribe to your feed, and if you continue responding positively, so will they. Psychologists call it reinforcement. You do something, you get a positive or pleasurable result, you want to do it again. Remember this in your social media activity – you are engaging with your audience; these are conversations; they work two ways.

At a party, if you are getting nothing out of a conversation, you will find an excuse to walk away and find somebody more rewarding to talk to, and that brings us to…

Content

If you don’t have anything interesting or valuable to say, why should somebody listen? Relate this to the two points above: (1) it has to be of interest to your audience(s). This does not mean to say that it has only to be commercial or technical. We are looking at conversations between people and we are all human with diverse interests. One of the the great things about ‘social’ media is that it is ‘social’. We all like to share the human side as well as the business side. But, if you bear your audience in mind, it should be fairly straightforward to identify general areas of shared interest.

Remember the behaviour aspect? If somebody reads or subscribes to your blog and gets valuable, interesting or entertaining content, they will behave positively: they will come back, they will recommend you, they will forward your content.

It is as easy as ABC.

Finally a mobile measurement system.

Digital Marketing No Responses »

Feb 042010

It seems marketers are getting rather excited at the launch of a new mobile measurement system. Today saw the launch by GSMA and ComScore of what (according to research) nearly 60% of marketers have been waiting for before opening their purses.

This love of metrics is a curious thing and goes back to the dark ages of marketing where ‘if you can’t measure it it is no use’. I remember evangelizing for Internet marketing back in the early 90s, when the constant criticism was, “We wouldn’t know who is looking at our site – probably some 13 year old kid in Uzbekistan”. Then new media became the most measurable medium with more stats and measurements available than the most statistically driven marketer could shake a spreadsheet at. In tight fiscal times it is no wonder that calculation of ROI became the name of the game.

Now it is the turn of mobile media – and I for one am pleased that this is getting some direction. Mobile media has been sniffing around the door for a long time now. I’m sure that measurement is the key to letting it in and we will all see what dimensions have real value.

Marketers will be knocking on clients’ doors with fistfulls of stats and persuasive arguments… just remember the old saying though; “You don’t fatten a pig by weighing it”.

What will be the three big digital things for 2010

Digital Marketing, Marketing No Responses »

Jan 172010

New year is always a time for predictions and I’ve been looking through the crop on various blogs and in trade magazines, and, not to be outdone, here are the three things that ring bells for me.

Visual internet

The web will continue to get more and more visual. Sure, it will still be a text based medium at heart, but but more broadband has brought us more images, animations, Flash and of course video (okay, for ‘visual’ read ‘audio visual’). The boundaries of possibilities for marketers are expanding with increasing rapidity. The facebook/youtube generation is driving communications and conversations.
While we live in very exciting times I do have some worries, with my accessibility hat on, as we move away from text and hope everyone keeps in mind users with disabilities.

Mobile

There is little doubt that mobile is going to be very big in 2010, as it has been threatening for some time, but in what shape we still have to wait and see. It is a slippery concept – just when you think you have got your hand on it it moves on. Undoubtedly mobile apps fuelled by the iPhone and Google are driving one end with social internet revving up the other. Watch out for more mobile blogging.

Electronic PR

ePR has been galloping away in a quiet revolution and has already become a powerful and cost effective tool. Those who thought of it as just an electronic delivery system have had to think again. Social internet is still a bit of a wild child, but the borders between Web 2.0, online publishing, PR and web-promotion are becoming increasingly blurred and I suggest that in 2010 we will see agencies emerging offering a radically new type of service. While budgets continue to be squeezed, savvy communicators will be looking to ePR.