Hmmm…. your customers are creating the market place now not you. Give us choice and we will take it! Look at us has been replaced with look at what we are doing. The big question; is your marketing designed for a static world or an ever changing one?

Markets will always outperform individual businesses, they also learn a lot faster and are better connected than  business too. If you’re marketing ain’t broken, its about time you asked yourself why? As Jeff Jarvis said “The mass market is dead. It committed suicide. Google just handed it the gun.”

Most companies, for the last 10 years, have taken the easy way out to market their brands, they have essentially bought customers. Sadly, its cost more and more and had less and less impact. In the past it was about driving traffic to your business, now its about loyalty.

Remember this equation; Feeling valued = loyalty + commitment

Most of us are still acting as if what we do is scarce. Shouting isn’t going to get you heard above the crowd, not when everyone else if shouting too. Now really is the time to tear up the marketing you have been doing in the past. Measure its return on investment and, then when you’ve picked yourself up off the floor, go and find some other way of connecting with your customers.

In October I had to queue to get into the Likeminds Conference in Exeter. This time I was one of the many getting kicked out by Scott Gould at the end of the night!

Well they went and did again didn’t they? The organisers, speakers and delegates raised the bar without creating one! “People to people” was the focus of this full day conference which threw up just as many questions as answers, but that’s the point.

There were particular vibrant and engaging presentations from Jonathan Akwue, Joanne Jacobs, Olivier Blanchard and the irrepressible Chris Brogan. Even the thought of Chris stood on stage in his Superman underpants did nothing to dissuade the audience (sorry you needed to be in the room to get that one!)

There was nothing irksome about the day. Superbly organised with a truly community feel, we all felt a little bit human again. The key lightbulb moments;

1. “When you give people a voice, you have to be prepared for what they are going to say.” Jonathan Akwue. That one  is for all you leaders out there!

2. “Understand, participate and then lead.” John Bell. Yep you got to eat an elephant in bite sized chunks.

3. “Having a prescence in social media is worthless unless you do something with it.” Olivier Blanchard. You know sometimes a blinding flash of the obvious is so bloomin’ powerful.

4. “You have to make people feel special.” Chris Brogan. Many of us commented we did feel special!

The buzz in the room was inspiring and so positive, there were obviously no Daily Mail readers in sight! People talk a lot about the social media hype. I’m curious to what they mean by that. Social media for many businesses is the Titanic’s iceberg and its no good re arranging the deckchairs on the old ship anymore. Its a difficult time for many companies. But, perhaps by humanising the relationships we have with people, we can actually thrive.

This conference showed that even in six months not just the technology has moved on, but so has our thinking. It can’t be taken as a token gesture, its serious stuff and it has serious implications. Miss the next one? Er no!

Some people, in fact more than we would like to admit, are underestimating the scale and the power of non financial motivations. This is also true of freedom to express oneself too. I recently had a delegate offer ” why on earth would my employees want to express themselves?”

The web is not a separate world, so far in the distant, too difficult to reach and understand. It really isn’t Jupiter. It’s actually just a different one that is presenting a different set of rules, a change in the way we do things and allowing us to connect in a way we have never experienced before. It’s unprecedented.

A lot of us are having to unlearn things, lots of things. For those of you who think the web is isolating and responsible for a generation of people who don’t communicate with each other, think about this; all of us watching the Winter Olympics around the world at the moment, in our own living rooms, passive, one way, broadcast stuff, now who’s isolated?

As the new tactics of marketing really start to have their say, as the case studies begin to roll in and as the mass market gets used to using these new tools to communicate, connect, share and collaborate with customers, it will demand a significant shift in your business too.

Gone are the days when you bought a bit of advertising and then waited for the customers to roll in. We’ll laugh loudly with slight embarrassment in a few years time when nostalgically we remember the days when we used to send brochures and leaflets out in an attempt to attract people to our business.

This change is unprecedented and like a ball rolling down a hill its gaining momentum. As Clay Shirky says “Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. The invention of the tool doesn’t create change; it has to have been around long enough that most of society is using it.” Well they are getting boring and whilst we may be a little way off mass adoption, it will hit us like a barge pole from behind if we are not prepared.

It won’t necessarily mean marketing budgets will soar, in fact they are likely to plateau if not reduce. Individual customer experiences and solid relationships will become more important than you being in the local rag (mainly because it may not exist anymore.) What social media may do is reduce your marketing budget but be aware it may also increase your own personal time investment in communicating.

I’m cheating today, but hey if someone posts something concise and great, why not share it, it’s what blogging is about! Fabulous post by Seth Godin, got me thinking anyway.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/in-between-frames.html

This social media is an amazing thing particularly for people who do a lot of thinking and have lots to say about their specialist stuff. Like anyone using tools like blogs, Twitter and Facebook, you have a journal of everything that you have ever written. The media would have us believe that this ability to record everything we do, say and photograph has its downside, well welcome to life, aren’t most things like that. On the whole, this ability to trace back and revisit something you said can be both a delight and embarrassment but, hey, how exciting and convenient is that?

You can’t avoid it. You can’t sweep it under the rug and you certainly can’t run like hell. We know the online world is starting to overpower the offline world. We can now start to show case studies of how big corporates are radically overhauling their marketing budgets towards social media activity.

People are talking about it, having conversations about it, delivering seminars about it, meeting about it, discussing it and, of course, doing it! You can’t stop what’s happening but you must understand this social media explosive wave of communicating with customers and spreading ideas. The implications are both fascinating and daunting.

It’s evolving rapidly and is causing huge problems for companies large and small. Marketing campaigns you’ve used over the last 3 years have become irrelevant. Before you think I’m thrusting Facebook down your neck and recommending you immediately create fans stop! It’s too late now just to test it out, you’ll fail. You can’t do what I did 18 months ago and plunge into it with no armbands just to see what it was like and whether it was for me. I did! I love it and hate it at the same time. But, life has moved on, its too serious for you to see it as a side issue.

I know how people are feeling, particularly those who haven’t done anything on the social media front yet and those who are wanting to rack things up this year. It presents a paradox; exciting and overwhelming! The key thing to think about is that actually the technology doesn’t really matter….it can almost do anything! What we all need to focus on, no matter what stage we are at, is how social media can help you  to develop relationships with people.

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book ‘Groundswell’ quote “people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.” I  would add that this is not a trend that is about to go away, in fact, its likely to blow your business model apart over the next few years. As I mentioned earlier, its not something you can dabble in anymore, you need understanding, structure and strategy.

With hindsight, I’d consider following these four steps before embarking on a marketing approach that is not a spectator sport:

1. Read, read and read. Follow people who know what it’s all about and understand why its happening.

2. Understand what it is! It’s not just Facebook and Twitter. Consider some case studies.

3. Think about how you can use it to develop relationships with your customers, suppliers, people and community. It’s about allowing participation and having a conversation.

4. Then, with help, build a strategy that can be implemented. A focused approach that doesn’t expect miracles overnight but that gradually and solidly sustains your marketing over the long term.

Hope that helps!

There isn’t enough scarcity! There are hundreds of design agencies in each city, thousands of law firms, trainers, consultants, cafes, bed & breakfasts, widget makers and art galleries. Not to mention the thousands of photographers graduating from UK universities this year.

They are all ‘me too’ products and everything looks the same. A walk down any high street can be soul destroying. One store after another selling the same stuff, for the same price, offering the same deals with the same mediocre service. There is nothing scare in the high street anymore, just an abundance of sameness. And, again, it’s the same in most industries.

Things that were scare in the past are not anymore; products, food, technology, advice and much more. They have become easy to find and easy to purchase. Scarcity has shifted from the physical. When you sell something in abundance, you know it doesn’t take much for someone else to move in on your territory, sell what you sell for half the price, leaving you scratching your head, wondering where your business model went wrong. Wetherspoons is a great case study here.

Scarcity seems to be directly linked to value and desire. You ban a book, people flock to buy it. Wii have used scarcity tactics for their product but that’s not what I mean, that’s just simple old marketing tactics. True scarcity is trust, sincerity, authenticity, true innovation, long term relationships and collaboration, not Apple marketing ‘limited supply’ of the latest generation of iPhones!

Perhaps marketing is to blame. It was the ‘get out clause.’ Crap, ‘me too’ products were okay because huge investment in mass marketing managed to shift them. At the same time it possibly stifled innovation. The biggest US pharmaceutical company has $200 billion in sales, yet they only spend 14% on R&D and 31% on marketing and administration. At the same time new drug registrations have reduced from fifty a year in the 1990’s to about 20 today!

So whilst we have been concentrating on marketing that led to abundance, we forgot about innovation that created scarcity. Frankly speaking, unless you find something scarce in your business, the next couple of years are going to be very difficult. Business cannot sustain itself on an abundant business model where everyone is fighting for their part of the pond. Unless, of course, you have an abundance of cash to see you through until you find something scarce.

We all have a tendency to spend enormous amounts of time on the wrong things we think make us competitive. Our product, the way the store looks, how we market, what marketing messages we communicate, how we look. And, when we are really scraping the barrel, our price. Okay some of these things are important, but not to the exclusion of what will really make us competitive in the future. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place?

In fact, the most predominant, fundamental, important, radical, distinguishing factor that makes you competitive is your people. They control costs, implement procedures, deliver customer service, develop new products, conduct research, find new ways of doing stuff and get things done.

We, on many occasions, fail to look at competitiveness correctly, realising that sometimes, we have it the wrong way round. Stop adding things to your product/service and start creating value for your people. Comprehend that 2010 will be about relationships (see last blog). They will be your worthy asset. Products come and go, relationships must not, they cost too much to replace.

In all the loudness, the shouting, the telling, the one sidedness of it all, we’ve forgotten what really matters the relationship. The relationship you have with your people, with your customers, competitors and collaborators. Communication is out (far too one sided) and, as we know, conversation is in (its far more two way.)

As Christopher Locke said in The Cluetrain Manifesto, “genuine conversation flourishes only in an atmosphere of free and open exchange.” That means respecting people’s opinions, feeling what its like to be in there shoes, understanding their values and concerns. Attempting to help solve solutions, not absolve ourselves from responsibility by building robust, meaningful relationships.

2010 will mean us becoming more ‘real’ and the web and social media will aid us in this mission next year. Many still think of the web as not real, yet it’s never been more real, more alive, more exciting. It generates millions of conversations everyday. It transports important information every hour and it enables people to stay connected every second. It’s time for you and I to get a grip and think about how the web will help you develop and sustain great relationships next year.