Social Media Win or Fail: Pasta House

While the lottery is now over, there were a few businesses that took advantage.

This months social media win or fail is the Pasta House. The Pasta House is a small chain of Italian restaurants in the St. Louis Missouri area. This month they scored a win because of their campaign around the lottery.

The offer was simple, like our page, like and share this post, and we will split this ticket with you if we win. Simple premise. Fantastic results.

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This post took off like wild fire all around their region. What was the investment? It was not a sponsored post so just the cost of the ticket, which is a few dollars at most. The return might be some of the highest ROI i have ever seen.

According to some the Page Watching tools that Facebook provides they had 200% growth in their page fans and engagement. They picked up 1000’s of fans for literally a few dollars.

This was gorilla news jacking at its finest. What a win!

 

Edge Craft

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I just finished reading, Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin. One of the best thoughts in the book was something along these lines:

[bctt tweet=”If you are going to build a car, don’t build a faster car, build the fastest car.”] If your restaurant is going to use their attractive waitstaff as a marketing tool, get super models or twins. Find the edge of what can be done and that makes you unique.

-Seth Godin

My edge craft is providing all the marketing services a small business needs in one place and at an affordable rate.

What is the edge you are crafting on?

 

 

#freemarketingidea

From the Clinton Presidential Library when Renae and I visited in Summer 15.
From the Clinton Presidential Library when Renae and I visited in Summer 15.

 

Do you give anything away for free?

Maybe it’s a free upgrade to an order, maybe it’s a free white paper, maybe its a free consultation.

Why would you do that?

Free is the opportunity to create a reciprocal relationship. Free could be the chance to prove yourself.

So what could you give away for free? Probably something you have in abundance. The reason a lot of restaurants give away free drinks, is because they have a huge amount of syrup on hand and it costs them very little. But at the same time their profit margins on the drinks are huge. But if it leads to a purchase of a burger or pizza, they come out ahead. It also gives them a chance to make you a fan!

I have an over abundance of ideas. While in the gym the other day, I saw a commercial for CopperFit Compression products. It had Brett Farve playing flag football with the compression product. My brain immediately thought, what an amazing campaign idea: take submissions of people using CopperFit products to win a chance to play flag football with Brett Farve! So I tweeted it to them.

No one responded. I didnt expect them to. It didn’t cost me anything to tweet it and I didn’t lose anything by sharing that idea. But the upside could be huge. What if someone from Copper fit saw it and thought, “Hey, I like that idea!” and gave me a call. What if someone else say that idea and thought, “That guy has a great idea, I wonder what he could do for my brand.”.

It could lead to future business. Ideas are worthless if you do nothing with them. I am going to start sharing more of mine with #freemarketingidea.

Building Authenticity

Authenticity is something that seems to be in short supply these days in our culture. People love to lie and marketers have a lot to do with why lying is so prevalent. Seth Godin, one of my marketing heroes, even has a book called “All Marketers are Liars”.

Authenticity is something that is growing in value in our society because no one seems to have it, especially companies! Frequently when speaking with a potential client about marketing, I start by saying, “if you are not delivering consistently great products, I cant help you.” Marketing for an organization where clients are frequently disappointed in the product is like a dog chasing its tail!

Brand authenticity comes from, “meaning what you say and saying what you mean”. If your brand comes through on its promises over time, you will become to be viewed as authentic. Authenticity is a powerful currency in our day and age and especially with millennials.

However a lack of brand authenticity does not mean you will not succeed, but you may end up being the lowest common denominator. Examples like McDonalds and Walmart show brands that no one really likes but that are successful because of price alone! They excel and being the lowest common denominator.

We should be striving to build brand authenticity everyday through each interaction we have with clients. That authenticity will build over time and help create stark raving fans. And we could all use more stark raving fans.

 

 

 

Social Media Win or Fail: Lagavulin Scotch

This month on Social Media Win or Fail: Lagavulin Scotch

This was a huge win for Lagavulin Scotch:

Why was this a win?

  1. It was a low budget ad that has easily garnered 2 million views in the first week of it being posted online.
  2. I counted well over 15 major news outlets that did a story on the video. (FREE PRESS!)
  3. It capitalizes on Nick Offerman’s character from Parks and Rec Ron Swanson’s love for this brand of Whiskey. This brings in two audiences: Nick Offerman fans, and Parks and Rec fans. Brilliant cross reach.
  4. People will probably play this in their homes, on their computers and tvs, during the holiday season. People will willing play this AD in their homes for fun this holiday.
  5. Because of the way its shared, there is no cost in hosting. Only production costs here. Zero cost in distribution.

What an amazing win for this smaller brand of scotch!

Are you making videos yet?

If not, why not?

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Video is the hottest thing in marketing right now! This chart from Marketing Charts shows that most marketers put video at the top of the most effective content types!

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Video is the new standard of content for engagement. Don’t have a sweet video setup? Start with your smart phone. Smart phones these days take great video! One of the most important things is to just start!

Video is here to stay, so the question is: Are you making plans to make the best of it?

 

Good Experiences spread!

We have all heard it said that the best marketing is word of mouth. From a marketing perspective, it is the absolute best way to do marketing. But how do you create good word of mouth?

The best way is to deliver great customer experiences every time someone comes in. Some of the biggest setbacks in restaurants I have seen is when the staff had an off night. The effects of that can be felt for weeks. Bad word of mouth spreads.

In this new chart from MarketingCharts, we see what people want to do when they have a good experience. Most everyone will tell friends and family. That is why I put an emphasis on working on the entire organization, holistic marketing, rather than just buying a billboard! Lets work towards making start raving fans!

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How Do Consumers Say They’d Respond to Positive Customer Experiences?

Social Media #Win or #Fail: Gillette

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This month in social media #win or #fail: Gillette Razors. I am classifying it is as a #FAIL (But Gillette if you are reading this and would like to discuss why its not, please send me a tweet @k_adelsberger)

(Also full disclosure, I have a beard and very rarely use my Schick razor to trim up my beard.)

It all started one October morning, I opened up twitter and saw a promoted tweet from Gillette Razors. But it was not Gillette’s tweet it is was someone else’s: IMG_2595

 

The tweet from @jlkirbee was a really interesting. It read like ad copy but seemed to be posted from a real person. Here are a few quick take aways from this attempt at capitalizing on someones social media comments:

 

  1. Not written like a real person. It looks as if @jlkirbee is a real person. Active on Twitter, Medium and Facebook. Although Bas Collective does not have an online presence(I did send a request to interview him for this post but he did not respond). I am a big fan of testimonials for marketing. However, the tweet above is written like it was copy from a marketing person for a print ad.
    I think where the ad went astray was the shot at Harry’s and the “#power in #research”. These two lines cross over from customer preference to marketing effort. Now of course, @jlkirbee could have written this himself, but it looks like something written by Gillette. This make it appear to cross a line that the internet holds dear: honesty. Because of the way this tweet was worded and subsequently promoted by Gillette makes it appear to be fake. The internet responded in kind.
  2. IMG_2598 Gillette took it to far. Gillette reached out thanked @jilkirbee for the tweet. This was good social media marketing, respond and endorsing your customers. But when the tweet started to be sponsored on 10/9, the push back was palpable. People started taking shots at @jilkirbee and Gillette:
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3. Gillette opened itself up to competition. In fact Gillette exposed one of its customers up to a competitor because they promoted a tweet that featured them.

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Gillette took a sound idea for a strategy and failed on the execution. The strategy: find customers who like us enough to talk about us on social media and then leverage social media to promote that post. I think they took a misstep with the post that they promoted. I think the real winner here was Harry’s. The Harry’s customers came out and supported the brand and ultimately used the attack in their favor.

Harry’s was listening and replied to at least one of the tweets. Harry’s is doing smart online marketing with sponsoring podcasts and providing a product that is bringing real disruption to the market.

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A pound of cure in a bad customer experience (Pt. 2)

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In a pervious post I looked at what an Ounce of Prevention might look like in preventing a bad customer experience. (You can read it here).

Now lets talk about what to do when a bad customer experience happens.

  1. Do Not Take It Personally:
    I know a few small business owners who take a customer responding badly to their product or service after a failure really personally. When someone takes personally a bad review or a customer expressing their bad experience it can interrupt their logical thought process in trying to make amends.
    It is vital to remain emotionally distant from the situation so that you can respond in the proper way. Responding from an emotional position can end up escalating the situations and it will end up being more damaging to the brand. This also involves giving the customer the benefit of the doubt and not assuming they are just out to try and damage your business.
  2. Listen:
    Listen to what the customer is saying when they have a complaint to share. This is an opportunity to 1. Show empathy and 2. make a customer into a stark raving fan!
    Think about it! You have a customer who cares enough about their experience to tell you about how to make it better. There are those who are just out to try and get something for free but we should use this as a chance to become better.
  3. Finally customer may be entitled to some renumeration. If someone’s order was messed up, your product failed, or your service fell well below expectations you may need to reimburse the customer in someway. This is one step that can really make the client feel valued and could prevent you from losing a customer to getting at least one more chance to prove yourself to them.

If they comment on social media and the comment is legitimate, do not delete their post! Respond with kindness and an offer to rectify the situation. People will notice the response and generally reward you for it.

 

If you take this fail and do your best to turn it into a win a customer might end up having a great experience and you know what happens when a customer has a great experience? They tell people!

 

Everyday we have a chance to win and make stark raving fans. Make it count with every customer!

 

Customer Spotlight: Madison County CASA

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I had the pleasure of creating a new website, banner, and video for Madison County CASA. This project was extremely enjoyable for multiple reasons: great company contact, great service to help, and expanse of the project.

CASA needed a new website. The director of Madison County CASA applied for a grant through the Jackson Service League to get a new website. While working on the website, I added in a video and new banner to the project to help make the marketing for CASA more well rounded.

Come check out the website here: www.madisoncountycasa.org

And you can watch the video here (also during the first week of the release of the video, we have 12k videos! Read about there here)