Avi Hein

VC Fred Wilson visits Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss disruption. This event took place on May 13, 2009, as part of the Marketing Talks@Google series.

Marketing is changing rapidly. It’s not sufficient to have a website, nor even a social media account. A facebook page is no more a marketing strategy than a telephone is communications strategy.

Here are some of the concerns that your organization needs to prioritize this upcoming year.

• Digital first, print last: Both mediums are important but because of the real-time nature of digital, because of the immediacy of it, your planning should be one of digital first, print last. It’s far easier to repackage digital content for print than vice versa. Beyond that, digital is taking on increased importance. Google Israel CEO Meir Brand frequently says that in the future, we won’t be talking about “digital marketing” but just marketing: because all marketing will be digital. USA Today announced this past summer that they were emphasizing digital and reorganized their newsroom precisely to put digital first. The distinguished magazine, owned by Mort Zuckerman, US News and World report is ending its print edition, only publishing online. Digital content is real-time, requires writing for the screen and not print (The Yahoo! Style Guide provides some important tips for writing for the web and UI concerns).

• Website and IT integration: Jeremiah Owyang, of the Altimeter Group, writes on his blog web-strategist.com, that “strategists will start to infuse the most trusted conversations of prospects and customers back to the corporate website closer to the point of purchase or during customer support.” This is an essential tactic to increase conversions. Ultimately, one of the major reasons for smaller brands to get on social media is to increase sales. In Owyang’s blog, he writes, “Social Strategists have deployed social media in existing social networking channels like Facebook, Twitter, and beyond.   Yet there’s an inbalance as they’ve joined customer where they are, but have not tied it back to their overall corporate website.  This is due to a few reasons: primarily stemming from the reactionary nature of “we must have a Facebook strategy” and not thinking it through, and also the freedom to not rely on legacy IT and web publication systems.”
• Dialog – Owyang points out that most companies “lack true dialog, engagement, and enabling the customer to leave their own voice.” Past behaviors don’t lead to future success. “While strategists may be focused on dialog with customers, most are unable to give up legacy behaviors of direct marketing, advertising, and spewing content in all channels.  Brands must follow the 8 Success Criteria of Facebook page marketing –or risk an ineffective investment or worse yet, brand backlash.”
• Listening – Despite tools that still lack actionable metrics, brands are investing more and more in listening – essential as the volume of chatter increases exponentially. According to Owyand, “companies are already investing in brand monitoring systems, with deal sizes ranging from 50-100k per year per major product set”

INFLUENCERS is a short documentary that explores what it means to be an influencer and how trends and creativity become contagious today in music, fashion and entertainment.

The film attempts to understand the essence of influence, what makes a person influential without taking a statistical or metric approach.

Written and Directed by Paul Rojanathara and Davis Johnson, the film is a Polaroid snapshot of New York influential creatives (advertising, design, fashion and entertainment) who are shaping today’s pop culture.

INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION from R+I creative on Vimeo.

Sometimes, people new to social media don’t understand the difference between Facebook and Twitter. This is a relatively simple thing, but the consequences of misuse can have serious implications for your brand.

Too many people treat Facebook like Twitter — frequent status updates, posting multiple times a day. The consequences not only mean that, because they don’t understand Twitter, they are missing out on conversation, website traffic, and outreach to potential new leads, but it also means that they might be upsetting and annoying their existing Facebook fan base. This will result in losing fans, potential customers, and even potentially cause negative word-of-mouth. This is one of the basic reasons why it’s important to have professional community management and an open organizational structure that takes advantage of the Groundswell.

Here are one person’s comments/summary. We concur:

“Digital first, print last” is the mantra of John Paton, Journal Register CEO and co-founder of impreMedia. Paton says as long as a print mentality dominates a newsroom, media outlets will never be able to fully embrace the demands of online.

Watch the full video from the INK & Beyond conference.

In this short animation, the BTBuckets team explain, using a day-to-day example, the importance of using Behavioral Targeting and Segmentation on Websites. The conclusion: if you provide your guests (website visitors) with the food (content/design) they like, they will come to your party (become your customers) instead of going to your neighbors’ parties (competitors’ websites).

For philanthropic and non-profit organizations, they are struggling. Funding is down and changing communication channels have made them increasingly irrelevant. However, in a recent op/ed in the Jewish Exponent, The Cline Group’s Josh Cline lays out several tips and suggestions for how to remain relevant.

Read the whole article here, but below are some highlights:

There is a crisis in the nonprofit world today as technological change and social media have become mainstream, and the financial crisis has wiped out the wealth of many organizations’ traditional donors.

Continued success requires new planning to reach key audiences. Proper planning pays off, especially when your large donors are spread too thin, and the digital divide means that the nonprofit may not have the knowledge to engage with the 20- to 45-year-old professional.

This is not your future challenge; this is today’s reality. While you may have a lofty history, a 25-year-old MBA is creating a new social startup with the cell phone because you are not reaching out or being relevant. To be successful today, you need to be where your audience is — or you will not be around tomorrow.

Instead of sending an e-mail or picking up the phone, people send messages on Facebook and post pictures on Twitter. When donating, it is done online or even with a cell phone. This is a fundamental shift in communication, yet too many Jewish organizations still see a static website as adequate.

What should organizations do to remain competitive? Here are a few tips:

• Recognize the Seismic Shift in Communications. Print is dying, and content is moving to digital. The newspaper still exists; it has just moved from print to online.
• Your Name Is Not Enough Anymore. Someone is creating a new social start-up that challenges your organization. Are you embracing it, or are threatened by it? The answer may determine whether you remain relevant.
• Listen First. Successful organizations today listen to what their target audiences want — and then provide it.
• Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse. Plan where you need to go in all core areas before implementing.

Can your e-mail land you in jail? E-mail is an important component of most company’s marketing mix. One Ohio carpet cleaning company attributed $1 million in sales to their e-mail marketing efforts.

When you are sending out e-mail, you considering factors like timing and frequency of e-mails, subject lines, and even capitalization. Certain trigger words (like “Dear”) are also likely to increase the likelihood of your e-mail going into the spam filter and never being read.

But have you thought about how you collect e-mail addresses and how people join your mailing list? Did you know that your collection mechanism might not only be bad practice and hurt your reputation but also against the law?

Unfortunately, you might be spamming people and not even know it. Many companies will gather e-mail addresses from contacts and add them to mailing lists without the person’s consent. Other people will request that their friend be added to their mailing list.

In 2003, the United States Congress passed the CAN-SPAM law. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 establishes the United States‘ first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail and requires the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce its provisions. Among other provisions, the law requires that companies provide a clear unsubscribe mechanism, not falsify e-mail headers, and not contact people with whom it does not have a relationship with. While it is not a best practice, the CAN-SPAM law does not require explicit opt-in – it is possible to e-mail people who you have a relationship with even if they didn’t explicitly opt-in to receive your e-mail marketing. Nevertheless, other countries have much stricter laws and that is still not a ‘best practice.’ It does have significant consequence and violators have been prosecuted by courts. On February 16, 2004, Anthony Greco, 18 was the first person to be arrested under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. After pleading guilty, he was sentenced in a closed session. Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed and many people have been penalized by civil and criminal penalties. Your e-mail is serious business.

In 2008, Israel passed a more stringent law. The Israeli law requires that e-mail only be sent to people who explicitly ‘opted-in’ and consented to receive your e-mail. This is important even if your business is not located in Israel, because if you have someone on your e-mail list in Israel, they can still sue you. There are also many European laws similar to the Israeli law. The Act prohibits direct advertising by means of telephone, fax, SMS, or e-mail without receiving the recipient’s prior consent (in writing or in a recorded call) to receive ads. People can sue 1,000 NIS (about $277) for EACH unsolicited e-mail that they receive.

Of course, ultimately, the legal restrictions simply put into law what is best practice – don’t send people messages that they don’t want to receive.

For more information, and to ensure compliance with the CAN-SPAM law, check out the following resources from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC):

• The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business
• The FTC’s guidelines on spam.
• FCC: CAN-SPAM: Unwanted Text Messages and E-Mail on Wireless Phones and Other Mobile Devices

For information about Israel’s anti-spam laws, check out deliverability.com or the (Hebrew) site of ISOC, the Israel Internet Society.

Cause marketing — showcasing your product as valuable and helping the world (which must be backed by a real commitment to betterment!) — is a great way to reach Millennials (those under 30, born 1980 or later), according to new research by eMarketer.

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