ion Leap » social media

B2B Marketing Solutions for Less

IonLeap — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 03:07:24 +0000

Over the past 15 years, the cost of B2B marketing solutions has come down in many areas. While this is to be expected in mature categories, advances in digital technology and social media have driven the drop in pricing for B2B marketing down at a faster than expected rate.

Traditional costs are down

Photography –Of all the changes in B2B marketing, the changes in photography have happened faster and more completely than the others. Fifteen years ago, the idea of a photo shoot was not so unusual when a new campaign or print ad was required. The agency would give some kind of idea what the photo might include; either with a sketch or a composite of other photos. The client would sign off on the budget and the creative folks would go out and create the image. This could cost be well upwards of $15,000.

Now, creative people in the business go immediately to the stock world. Photo shoots are reserved only for new products, location shoots, or executive portraits. The big budgets for truly unique B2B photos shoots are reserved for only the largest B2B marketers like Microsoft.

Printing – The digital revolution has led to tremendous savings in collateral material and direct marketing printing, at least for short-run jobs. The time involved in printing smaller quantities of materials can be cut in half by a good digital printer.

The distribution of this printed material can be much faster as well. There’s a FedEx Kinkos in nearly every larger metro area and they can handle jobs which must rapidly be delivered to hundreds of locations. The savings are tremendous.

The changes in file delivery via email and FTP have made it possible for clients to reach wider for creative talent and easier for agencies like ion Leap to extend our footprint, working with clients all over the English speaking world. Recently we took on a quick job for a client in Boston who needed fast delivery of a large-scale poster (quantity one) which, while created in New Jersey and approved in New York and Boston, had to be printed and picked up in Boston. We used a FedEx Kinkos right down the street from the client.

Agency costs – The commoditization of ad agency services has led to tremendous cost pressure for these services. If you need traditional services like newspaper, radio and magazine ads, you can get this work done for a much lower cost these days. Those agencies who have successfully embraced integrated advertising have done better, but their number is small.

While ad agencies that offer only old-school B2B marketing solutions will find their days are numbered, their services are going to get more and more affordable until they finally give in. If you use them now, to take advantage of the discounted pricing, you won’t get integrated campaign thinking.

Data marketing – While the cost of data has dropped, the robustness of the records has increased exponentially. You can now reach into a target company by job title, you can often get email addresses, and you might even be able to append cell phone numbers or land line phone extensions.

Many data companies have found ways to offer data licensing in ways that make their cost-per-record far lower than before. This is another area that’s viewed as a commodity though, upon further investigation, you’ll find real differences in the service levels and service offerings. One note, work only with those data companies who own their own records.

New media solutions for B2B marketing

B2B search marketing – It’s still the Wild West in search marketing for B2B companies. So few companies actually understand how to go about getting their websites found by search engines. It’s rare to find companies like ion Leap who can help you achieve rapid success in search marketing. Our approach, while not the lowest cost, has proven ROI. We’d love to show you our success stories in this area.

Social media - Social media presents the opportunity to come up with wonderfully low cost and highly effective solutions for B2B marketing. The best methods we’ve seen at doing this are Twitter and Linkedin. The least effective for most B2B marketers are Facebook and Stumbleupon. With careful application of ion Leap’s social media methods for B2B marketing, you can achieve a level of success that makes many businesses look past the extreme hype about “social” and find ways to use it in a highly targeted way. At ion Leap, we’ve got some very interesting and very successful case histories in social media for business to business marketing.

Ion Leap for B2B marketing solutions

We have an unusual history in B2B marketing solutions. Our director has over 20 years experience in both traditional and digital ideas for business-to-business marketers. And these solutions have won both the admiration of our peers and the adoration of the clients’ CFOs.

We’d love to walk you through a few case histories. Please contact us.

Social Media for Business Communications

IonLeap — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 02:36:45 +0000

The scrutiny that most business marketing communications receive before they goes out to the public doesn’t seem to be viewed as important for social media. Certainly 90% of it doesn’t require executive control; but which 90%?

Social media for business is sometimes unimportant, and sometimes critical

When your company puts out a press release, it’s critiqued at every level before being sent out to the press. Advertising is the same – the radio, TV and print ads are all reviewed very carefully before release. But what about the hundreds of Tweets you put out every week? Do they undergo the same scrutiny? Of course not (unless you’re in pharma).

Most companies arrive at this kind of “triage” naturally, without really discussing it. They intuitively understand that not all communications are critical. But the danger is in dividing things up by media, especially in placing social media too low in importance.

Twitter and Facebook may seem ephemeral because they’re one-to-one and digital, but giving up on all scrutiny of social media communications for your business is truly dangerous. Imagine a customer calls your company with a complaint. Does that communication undergo any scrutiny from upper management? If that same complaint comes in via your Facebook fanpage, do you have a system in place to direct the communication up to higher management? Do the people who manage your social media know what to do if advice comes in that could truly make your product or service better?

Certainly 90% of what we Tweet and post on Facebook isn’t earth shattering. Much of it is simply an ongoing drum beat about our companies and people. But it’s that other 10% of communications that happens about us that’s so critical; some of it good, some of it bad. Every bit of the communications about your business in social media should be followed and a certain amount of it addressed directly.

One of our clients discovered that one angry past customer had set up a hate page on Facebook about them. They delayed; they ignored; they spoke to lawyers, and it just went on and on. Any Google search of that company today, even 9 months later, finds the client’s page #1 and the hate page #3 on the results. This could be solved very easily, but they’re not paying attention to it. We could have pushed that hate page down to page 2 or 3 within a few months.

Your business executives must keep an eye on social media communications

Smaller companies can keep their eye on social media communications, but it becomes much more difficult when companies are larger. Then the corporate chain of command can prove difficult. Who owns an angry customer on a Facebook fan page? Who writes the replies and tries to contain the damage?

Train the employees who manage your social media how to recognize an opportunity to deepen a one-to-one relationship, solve a problem, etc. Social media for business is an opportunity for you to have a much closer relationship with your clients, customers and prospects, but only if you’re right on top of it.

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Social media for business requires constant attention

Social Media for Business Step 2

IonLeap — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 03:17:50 +0000

Once you’ve figured out your company’s identity in social media, the next step is to think through your tone of voice. This part doesn’t have to take long and it doesn’t have to make you crazy.

Choosing a tone of voice for your business in social media is easy

If you look at the personalities of the leaders in your company, it’s a pretty good bet they have many of the attributes that your current customers would attribute to your company as a whole. If their approach to business is lighthearted, then your tone in social media might be best if it’s crafter to be that way.

Your company has attracted the clients and customers you have now, in large part, because of the personalities of your leaders. That’s what tone of voice is: personality.

It’s social, it’s media and it’s for your business

Too many companies try to put huge restrictions on what can and cannot be said in social media. They think that a tone of voice must restrict whether a company can be both funny and serious in their communications. Or must it restrict their ability to be both empathetic at times and demanding at others? The answer is simple – treat your tone of voice like a human being with a personality. A human can be both funny and serious. They can be energetic some days and lazy on others. If you use the human attributes of your company – the personalities of your leadership team – then you’ll have a lot more you can say about any topic in social media.

Be sociable in this media for your business. Be real. Be inviting. Don’t try to be perfect. Think of it as a party. From time to time, you’re gonna spill something on your necktie. If you get all wigged out by that, everyone will think you’re too uptight. If you laugh it off and move on, people will think you’re more fun to be around. We all make mistakes; even in social media.

Not 20 people. Not just 1 person either

While we don’t think your business should govern your social media messaging by committee, we do thing you should designate more than one person for the job. Leaving it all in the hands of one person is simply not wise. It’s too visible and if that person has a bad day, you’ll wish you had built some checks and balances into the system.

On the other hand, I’ve been in situations where businesses attempt to be social by committee. This is nuts and will show you down to the point where you’ll basically have no voice out there; you’ll be mute or even worse – you’ll be dull.

And now, the inevitable sales pitch

Ion Leap manages social media for business communications, blog writing, website writing, on the radio, on TV, in print ads, and lots more for businesses of all sizes. If you’d like to trust your social tone of voice to a group of experts, then we just happen to have room for one or two more clients. Click here to learn more. (That link is gonna take you to our Facebook fan page ’cause…you know…we’re social like that)

Youth and Social Media – A Principal Mistake

IonLeap — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 04:55:16 +0000

I attended my son’s middle school graduation yesterday. The principal of the school stood up and started his speech by talking about how he’s upset by how much time today’s youth spend looking down when they should be looking up.

He was bemoaning the use of electronic media – texting, social media, PDAs, etc.

In so doing, this principal was drawing a stark line between the generation that reached age 14 without electronic media and the current age that has been inundated with it from birth. While this is certainly a popular topic among the elder set today, I think it’s time we stopped preaching to today’s youth and started learning from them. Maybe they’re doing exactly what they should do.

The large crowd in the audience applauded loudly at the principal’s well-timed speech. I kept my mouth shut and made a mental note to come home and blog about the issue because I couldn’t disagree more, but apparently I’m in the minority among the over-40 set.

The Huffington Post covered research by the Pew Research Center that said 1/2 of American teens ages 12 – 17 send over 50 texts a day. “Two-thirds of the teens said they would rather text a friend than call and more concerning still is that less than a third reported talking to their friends face to face.” Why is this ‘concerning?’ By whose standard? The Huffington Post? The Pew Research Center? The Principal of my son’s middle school? What is the average age of the people doing this study or reporting it? How do they know this will lead to bad things? They don’t. It’s simply different from how they (we) grew up.

I think it’s time we studied the overwhelming popularity of this trend and ask ourselves if it’s really so bad that our youth have a completely efficient way to communicate intricate details of their lives, feelings and events. I suspect that, years from now, we’ll find that this heavy communication of trivial events in their lives made them entirely unique adults, totally successful and better able to conduct their lives.

My mother, in her contrarian way, often encouraged me to let my children play computer games. She had observed that the children who spent significantly more time focused on such “terribly distracting electronic media” turned out to do better in school and thereafter. I listened to her and guess what – she was right. My kids are doing great at school, have lots of close friendships and are totally adept in social settings.

Here’s a quote from another short sighted over-40 father:
“I’m very upset that my kids and their friends depend on texting and Facebook to communicate. They should step up to the plate, be a man and take the risk of talking face to face. I didn’t raise my kids to hide behind a phone keypad. How did this happen?”

Well, guess what. It did happen. My issue isn’t with the fact that kids are embracing technology in a way their parents generation cannot. I’m more concerned about the divide; about the self-righteous attitude that is driving a wedge between these generations.

A suggestion

Get out your phone and send a text. Send lots. Train your fingers to do this quickly and efficiently. You’ll be amazed how useful it becomes in your life. There are times when only a text message will do. Here’s an example – After the graduation ceremony, when the preacher…er…principal was done scolding the next generation, we all met for dinner. I couldn’t remember the names of a couple who were there with us. (It happens when you’re over 40.) So I texted someone across from me. She picked up the phone, smiled and texted me the answer. Seamless. No embarrassing moments. A perfect use of texting to make everyones’ life better.

Sources and other reading –

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendy-strgar/teen-texting-deciphering_b_616829.html

http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/kids-need-to-experience-nature_2010-06-13.html