Posts Tagged ‘boston’
The Future Is Now
After a long week at FutureM 2010, many professionals and young people came together to share new insights and experiences around the future of technology, marketing and business. New innovations maybe on the way for mobile carriers to having their own credit cards, or partnering with others to help better facilitate the exchange of goods and build loyalty. Additionally, new movements are forming to better understand how to measure the behaviors of the audience to strategizing your next step for engagement. All in all, it’s about listening to your audience, identifying the community and contributing to it, by providing useful resources in a manner that is not selling and yelling, but rather creating and curating the conversation. The importance of mapping out the touch points of your audience both online and off-line to establishing the right message, at the right time, using the right medium.
Although everyone wants to learn what’s new on the horizon and social media is the rave, don’t forget to neglect traditional means of marketing to your audience, as Victor Lee, SVP of Marketing and Branded Entertainment of Digitas suggested an integrated approach. “Think of the analogy of the leaky bucket and make sure to balance the information across other channels between traditional and online. If you have too much in one area and not the others, you’ll run into leaks.” I’ve promoted that same notion time and time again to others. As one monitors the different channels of information to reach audiences, consider this as guidance to planning your next steps to engaging them:
- Define the goal
- Map out engagement across different touch points
- Review behavior: Where they came from and where are they going?
- Build rapport and sense of community by creating a personal experience
- Listen and address customer service
How about measuring the results?
One needs to review such metrics as to what keywords are people typing to learn about your brand and competitors, how many website visitors are you attracting based on those keyword searches, where else is the audience going once they left your website or complementary mobile apps, and how many of those visitors took action that may have converted into real results based on your goal? I’ve been noticing the amount of likes, sign-up now, check-ins there and every where to eventually turn into another form of SPAM for the customer. The brands that are authentic, listen, reach out and provide value to the audience over time, are the products and services that will prevail.
- Listen
- Curate
- Contribute
- Activate
As Victor mentioned as well, “don’t just look at the amount of ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ one brand has, but look at the action one takes after a certain marketing campaign or promotion that positions the customers ‘in market’ to finding something valuable about your business to take action.” If it takes multiple clicks before getting a conversion, see if you can better streamline the process, or avoid that medium altogether with your product and/or service.
- Build community to create advocacy
- Focus on content strategy
- Follow people that follow you back
- Ask people to invite three more friends to join your cause
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again
Despite the multiple challenges along the way, Tom First certainly tried and tried again to keep his business alive and pursue what he loved. As one of the founders of Nantucket Nectars, he offered entrepreneurs and marketing professionals advice on his keys to success with no formal business background of his own at FutureM.
Go with your gut and be real with your customers. What we know today as best practices for social media is what Tom was doing before the phenomenon existed online. He would make a point to pound the pavements of Boston to DC and speak with people to find out what they were saying about his new juice concoction.
When the radio guys said you need a catchy script to sell your product, he said to his partner Tom, we’ll just make something up on the spot. Tom & Tom created a real conversation on the radio telling their story about their product. People listened and it built trust in the brand.
The industry said you have to do something a certain way to find success. Tom First figured out on his own to break the rules conducting taste tests across the country out of the back of his car, dropping into local restaurants to “do lunch” at multiple mom and pop stores to increase his distribution, and learned how to define a new way of doing business.
Mom was always right – SAY PLEASE, THANK YOU and BE POLITE!
Being real, connect with your audience online and off-line, listen, put a face behind your product and be polite. These were some of the tactics that Tom First adopted at the different stages of his business. Today, many marketers are trying to put more flashy sales tactics, use bait and switch tactics to generate leads to up-sell products and services, or gain a following of fans through Facebook and Twitter to sell and not tell an honest story. As Tom First said, “Regardless of marketing in this market, if your product sucks, doesn’t matter how much you do to grab someone’s attention.”
What’s Your Six Degrees of Separation to Start-Ups?
My Personal Six Degrees of Separation From The Social Networks
I started singing at 13 and was working with local producers in Massachusetts that later went on with their career to discover many of the boy bands and teen artists of the late 1990′s and early 2000′s. At the time NSYNC was popular, I had interviewed Justin Timberlake at the Billboard Music Awards while I worked for an internet start-up called Teen.com. Little did I know Justin would later portray Sean Parker in the movie, The Social Network, who developed Napster, Plaxo, and partnered with Facebook making millions at early age. However, it was Mark Zuckerberg that was lured by Sean to move to Silicon Valley after he was crafting something down the street close to my home on the Harvard campus that impacted people across the world.
Keri Singer's Six Degrees of Separation to Social Networks
A couple years go by where I had an opportunity to meet Ben Mezrich at a Boston bar and I had overheard from others his success writing Bringing Down the House. Last year, I came to find out about his follow up book called the Accidental Billionaires. This book is what The Social Network was used to create the screenplay for the movie. A few weeks ago on the Friday after the film’s premiere, I just happen to sit next to Ben and his friends at the Loews theatre in Boston to share the experience with him in the same aisle as my friends!
There were many parallels in the movie The Social Network that hit home between my personal experiences working at an internet start-up in my early twenties to my ability to grow the popularity of the site that was later sold to Alloy Media + Marketing. In the past, I’ve been fortunate to meet and interview many celebrities, as well as be the leader to help develop new creative ways to attract audiences and promote some of the top artists in the music business at that time. It was through my hard efforts socializing with entertainment and consumer good companies to creatively partner with Teen.com that helped the site to stand out to eventually be sold.
In 2006, I had reached out personally to Facebook in hopes to learn of a future position that fit my background. I received a personal response via email below from their early product developer Matt Cohler, who had been instrumental at LinkedIN. Sounds familiar 
Keri,
Thanks for your note. Your experience is great but unfortunately we don’t have any openings for anyone with your background. But we’ll definitely keep your information on file for the future.
Best wishes and happy new year,
Matt
SCVNGR: The Rise of Social Location Base Services
About a year ago in 2009, I met Seth Priebatsch, the founder of SCVNGR and his partner Michael Hagan when I learned about their new business in Boston. Seth had just participated in an organization where my friend is one of the managing partners at DreamIt Ventures. Seth had impressed them with a new concept in mobile gaming and later received funding from another local venture capitalist firm at Highland Capital. Shortly thereafter, I was invited to pitch some of my marketing ideas (ironically which included Justin Timberlake in my marketing proposal with his involvement producing the MTV scavenger hunt series The Phone and working with college campuses) in a cattle call interview session in their South End offices. It was a mixture of marketing professionals and students to “audition” with our proposals in hopes to earn the position. I knew the idea to create-your-own and/or participate in a scavenger hunt using your mobile phone would gain popularity as more people adopted the technology. Needless to say this past summer, SCVNGR was proud to partner with Facebook Places and is growing with their collaboration.
The New American Idols
I’ve been fortunate to come into contact with others early on in their careers to have a chance to meet, greet, and interview. Early on, I’ve learned of new technology, a new entertainer, or business idea on the horizon that coincidently becomes a success story. I’ve also blogged about things a year or two ago that are coming to fruition today. It’s been happening quite a bit in my life to discover talent, notice trends and make connections with those that I’ve crossed paths. Some others that I’ve met before they were STARS include Jessica Simpson, Beyonce, Mark Wahlberg, NKOTB, Christina Aguilera and numerous others in show business. Whether it was the teen musical artists of ‘NSYNC, the people involved with Facebook early on, to now the days of SCVNGR making the headlines. I feel fortunate to have had those encounters and build quite a network of my own over the years. Hopefully, they will continue to be favorable when putting my own talents and innovation into action.
The new American idols aren’t just the celebrities as we’ve come to known, but as with the story of The Social Network, the new rock stars are the young people down the street with their talented programming skills, the neighbor developing an app, the social maven who is gaining a following, or the software developer that sells his/her ideas to become a success.
The “New Dorks” are today’s rocks stars of tomorrow. Check out this great video and presentation to have a good laugh. Today, I’m more interested to learn about the celebrities in our own backyard. The entrepreneurs and others at start-ups leading the path to making changes in their community and hopefully across the country, as the new stars are changing how we do business in the future.
