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CWC board member and VP of Special Events Peg Palmer brought this interesting post to our attention.
Take a look at some studies on how social media affects the functioning of our brain.
Click here to read about it on Beth's Blog.
If this link doesn't take you directly to the post, scroll down to Jan 14, 2009 post.
Very interesting.
Suzanne Dameron
Director, Emerging Communications
Long a respected organization in our region and internationally, SUN HYDRAULICS is highly regarded for its workplace values: Open doors, no titles, collaboration over communication.
I spoke to Allen Carlson about how Sun Hydraulics uses social media. In short, they don’t. One of the first companies ever to use the internet, they have elected not to blog, podcast or join social networking sites.
This is one example of how a company decides whether to utilize social media in their marketing mix. Carlson says business is good. They are known nationally and internationally. If an employee thought it would help business, they would ask for it – employees are not requesting that the company blog or join social networking sites. Carlson is frequently asked to join Linked In, a professional social networking site; so far he has declined.
Presentation:
Carlson gave us the history of SUN HYDRAULICS. Well-known for eschewing titles, they were required to submit them when they went public. Carlson’s business card carries no title.
SUN HYDRAULICS is also still using print Annual Reports and again, they required by the government to have it in print and available to anyone who asks. They carry the last ten years in archives on the website. As of 2010, the FEC will allow Annual Reports to be digital only.
This will change how annual reports are put together, how they look and how they will be distributed.
SUN HYDRAULICS was founded in Sarasota in 1970 and they didn’t sell first product until 1972. They became a national company by the mid 70’s and set up distributors around the USA. If you wanted to buy a product today, you would purchase from their dealer in Tampa.
Their model to go to market is like the automotive model - the customer has probably determined what they are buying prior to going to the dealer.
SUN HYDRAULICS customers have probably gone to the website, made their buying decision before going to a dealer. People come to their website, gather information, make a buying decision and fulfill it with the local dealer.
As SUN HYDRAULICS moved from being a local to a national to an international company, their perspective on marketing changed dramatically.
The web presented SUN HYDRAULICS with the greatest opportunity to grow. SUN HYDRAULICS was one of the earliest adopters of the web to deliver information. Their Harvard studies have been done on their company.
Here are three product categories of SUN HYDRAULICS:
Cartridges (about 5 million a year)
Integrated packages: an example of an application would be baggage handling equipment
Manifolds (make 5 million a year)
They have created differentiated products.
SUN HYDRAULICS is like BMW – they differentiate their products. They look different and cost more.
They have avoided commodities. They don’t sell Chevrolets or Fords – they sell BMWs.
Not only do they have the fastest or best looking products, they have the broadest array.
Their website is like an automotive website - you can configure the product.
You can spec different options. There are 25 million configurable products on their website.
The company has a 23% compound growth rate annually. They accomplished this through internal efforts. They went public in ‘97. The founder, when they were a 50 million dollar company, started looking at what they needed to do to ensure longevity. He decided going public was the answer.
Here is the business mix as of today:
47% in the Americas
33% in Europe
20% in Asia
They have locations around the globe now and their first international location was Switzerland. They make it easy for the customer to purchase. They did 1.5 million dollars of business in Singapore last year and they hadn’t visited them in 7 years. 2008 was their best year in business.
They invite other potential clients to visit and observe how they work. They do not require other countries to adopt their style. It is said that some other locations are more Sun than Sun is.
Time changes things – today they have 750 employees. The values are the same and the culture is the same but the mechanics have changed.
They serve a variety of markets in mobile and industrial fields. New business includes wind power, wave power, simulation, amusement parks, (Disney is a customer) cinema.
SUN HYDRAULICS plans way out in the future – 3-5 years. They tell potential investors that if they base decisions quarterly, they should choose another company.
Soft Assets: (A lot of companies tend to forget the importance of soft assets.)
BRAND - If the brand is strong enough, customers don’t Google it; they go to SUN HYDRAULICS directly.
DISTRIBUTION
SUPPLIERS
INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL
CULTURE
Guiding principles:
Be recognized as the BMW of the industry.
Differentiate product & service
Culture
Values
Geographic presence
They didn’t want a website packed with .pdf files. If you request information, the request comes from different servers so that the response to the visitors question is a fresh combination of variables. They can download into a STEP file or into the machine that needs it.
They have spent 10 million dollars on website development. On-going support of this website is 2 million dollars.
Management is all about …anticipation and preparation.
For example, they move production up early in the summer because of possible hurricanes. They get products out 4 days earlier than stated.
A leader sets the tone and establishes the how: The design of the office, tone, feel.
The knowing/doing gap: Harvard Business School: Organizations have lots of people who know what to do, but can’t get out of their own way. Some can do, but lack the background. They try to put knowers and doers together.
Communication: Anticipate who the audience is. Understand what they want to take away. How will you deliver? Paper? Letter? Annual Report?
Then, put together a draft; start with bullet points.
Decide what the take away is that the customer wants: It could be the style or feel of the piece.
Instead of basing things on budget, look at the opportunity. What’s the ROI?
They don’t advertise because they spend money building the brand.
They want to look like a global company but they want the local community to feel good about them. They believe that they are not communicating internally, they are collaborating. “I’m not telling you what to do but I’m telling you how I think or feel about this subject.” That is their style.
As they’ve grown from local to international, they’ve tried to keep the value of face to face communications favored by the founder. When they were small, there were no private offices. Now, they use e mail to collaborate between teams in different countries. Everyone can be in on the conversation.
Carlson returned to the photo on his power point that he started out with: He had asked us to think about this during the presentation and guess at the end. The closest guess was "museum piece." It turned out to be a plane once owned by Chairman Mao. It was being auctioned off in Shanghai the day he arrived on Oct 7, 2008. it is still available for a bid – the current bid is $1.7 million. However, it can no longer fly. It would be a museum or collector piece.
Q&A:
Who are your competitors?
The big box companies – They have $5-10 billion in sales and one piece of it is similar to theirs. They tend not to be as good. There are a bunch of start up companies that are very good. They don’t compete with us, they are more like a Chevrolet.
How did you build the brand?
The cartridge valves were demonstrated engineer to engineer. The industry is small and close knit so everyone knows everyone. The fact they were a small company in hurricane alley was an obstacle and so that is when they decided to open small facilities around the world.
Every package has the SUN HYDRAULICS logo and website address, every piece of literature, all communications…they keep a very consistent look.
The communication in the company is verbal - capital transfer is verbal – facilities are attractive, each one has a water feature – all facilities are similar (except China) on the interior, open office with no closed doors, you feel it immediately and you wonder how they get any work done.
How many employees invest in the company?
100%. They also get stock from the company annually. They also have a stock purchase plan.
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Anand Pallegar, Founder, atLarge inc., discussed how to use the traditional media model to identify emerging trends and technologies that will help cost-effectively market in the digital era. He also discussed how to learn about shifts occurring in social media and how to incorporate them into an overall marketing strategy.
Presentation:
Social media is about conversations and connections. The digital revolution has evolved so rapidly that we have seen a massive shift. In traditional media, they gave you what they wanted you to see. In the digital revolution, the consumer controls the message and there are a lot of feedback channels. RSS is a key component in that.
This leads to the erosion of media dominance and the rise of Citizen Journalism.
We’ve seen the fall of advertising and the rise of PR.
This created a web 2.0 revolution.
What is the technology that Web 2.0 enables?
We can manipulate content and images, a convergence of technologies that allows you to use one channel and distribute to many channels.
The new media includes RSS, Blogs, podcasts, social networking, ideo, tagging, search, social book marking, wikis, analytics…We have many opportunities to integrate these into a platform.
How do you target the message to the audience?
Here is the spread of what users are doing-
People are creating platforms that take your data and push it out into other formats.
Key platforms are chatrooms, widgets, blogging, video sharing…..
The Guardian (UK) reported that if you get a group of 100 people online, then one will create content and 10 will interact and the other 89 will just view it.
How many people are using Google alerts?
Google alerts help you follow your own brand and/or key figureheads in your company; you can also follow your competitors.
How can you get involved in social media?
Listening/understanding what people are saying is often the first step in a strategy of getting involved in social media.
Wikipedia:
In order to post, you have to educate and contribute. If you want to put your company in Wikipedia, you will not be included. But if you contribute travel articles, and become a trusted contributor, they will be more likely to approve adding your company in. If you find a post that needs an image, find one that is appropriate and add it. Start building a relationship.
What is the concept of a wiki?
It’s consumer-based. Wikipedia is a consumer driven encyclopedia.
DIGG - Social bookmarking site
You can post content and images that you have found for others to comment upon.
This is a social media strategy. If you have something that is engaging, it can hit the front page of news and reach thousands of visitors to DIGG.
Compile a list of sites relevant to your business.
Del.icio.us:
Another book marking site. I can share my bookmarks with you and you with me.
You can search on Delicious for others in your industry and find out what they are talking about.
Newsvine:
This aggregates feeds.
You can publish your own news articles.
You can post them to newsvine.
It is Events oriented. Use it as a tool for moving forward.
Facebook:
You can build your profile before you build your brand.
A lot of people start pushing “stuff” out there without having a network.
A negative is that it is blocked off by access to Google.
You have to log on to use it.
Ning.
Create You Own Social Network for Anything.
Twitter:
This is a formof "Microblogging". Users have 140 spaces to answer "What are you doing?"
The site has grown in popularity. That can be built into your social media strategy.
For example, Zappo shoes – the entire company twitters. They make special offers only to their following on-line. If there is complaint, they can respond immediately. They can kill the message before it proliferates.
When the plane went down on the Hudson River this week, Sarasota J Krums tooks out his cell phone and send a photo to Twitter. Within 2 hours he was being interviewed on TV.
Google Analytics:
Very important to have some kind of measurement in all the marketing mix.
You need to tie it back to the ROI in some kind of way.
For example, if we are going to employ Twitter for customer updates, can we reduce the number of telephone calls? Does it increase sales? Satisfaction? Does the traffic justify the time? Google provides enough data so that you can view the sources and visitors and when they arrived. It can influence the budget – you you might see the need to spend less on the weekend based on traffic numbers.
With social media, you are looking for referrals.
ap@largeinc.com
Q&A:
How do you make money:
We are an interactive web agency. We have developed robust strategies which we measure with ROI.
Is there a way to manage these social media networks?
Some tools on the horizon are mash-ups who are looking at this.
It’s still an element in managing them.
What is the audience in each platform and how are you going to communicate with them. What do they want to learn about?
If I am I the business of X, what is it I want the social media to do for my products or services? How do they fit into my business goals? You need to have a business need before going to Flickr or Twitter. If you don’t have that discipline, you will lose an audience.
If you have video content, start with YouTube. Build a channel specific to the brand.
Determine the measure – is it people calling us on our 800 number? Sending an e mail?
Wikipedia has a lot of incorrect information. Can you please comment?
Yes that’s true. The question is how quickly does it get corrected. You can find an edit history of content. The moderaters have only so much leeway in looking at that content. If you are contributing content about your own business, you have to watch it like a hawk.
You need to create a taskforce around whatever marketing issues you have.
Building a task force and measuring these resources…assign a person to each channel.
You can also outsource and have someone check it for you.
Send questions or comments to Anand: ap@largeinc.com.
Anand founded his an award-winning agency specializing in online branding, with a vision of intertwining technology, creative and strategy to deliver exemplary online marketing solutions. By pushing its brand strategists, digital artists and Web programmers to continuously incorporate innovative technologies, market planning and design, the Agency has earned a reputation as a leading online marketer. The Agency has been tapped by some of the most influential brands in the world including BBDO, Chevrolet, Ford Motor Company, IMG Academies and J.D. Powers & Associates.
KSC managing partner Cheray Keyes-Shima, APR discussed media buying considerations and provided the audience with a questionnaire to evaluate the value of the media buy for your client.
Presentation:
Media buying is the purchase of time (broadcast) or space (print/internet).
It is the tactical implementation of an advertising strategy / last step in a marketing plan.
Your mission is to reach the RIGHT audience with the RIGHT message at the RIGHT time:
Mission accomplished when you can determine the following:
Competitive analysis
Establish your target market
Competitive Positioning (USP)
What is the budget?
Are you brand building or selling products or services?
- If your goal is to get traffic to an event that weekend, it’s very different from a coca-cola ad that is all about brand building.
Traditional Available Media:
Print – newspaper, magazines, direct mail
Broadcast – television, network & cable; radio
Out of Home: bill board: dioramas, car cards / mass transit
Pros and Cons of Newsprint:
+ can move quickly; have a variety of sizes available; focus on local reach; high frequency
- short shelf life; poor print
Pros and Cons of Magazines:
+ longer shelf life; good print quality; more versatility; credibility transfer
- lower frequency; longer lead time; limited placement
Pros and cons of television:
+ more reach than all the other media; advantage of sight and sound to tell your story and reinforce your brand; choice of cable or network
- expensive; production time is longer and more expensive than all the other media; no shelf life
The numbers are in for Obama’s campaign. 90% of the campaign was spent on TV.
Pros and Cons of Radio:
+ Production is less expensive than TV; lowest cost per thousand available; speed of production; availability of formats; imagination factor
- no shelf life; listener loyalty; no visuals; background only
Pros and Cons of Out of Home:
+ has impact due to size; can be used to build frequency; allows specific geographic targeting
- can’t give detailed message; no scheduling flexibility; can be defaced
A billboard should have no more than 9 words for an effective message
What is the best media mix for me:
In order to answer this question, you need to determine the target audience, best medium to reach the target audience, and decide if you can afford to launch an effective campaign using this medium or media?
Three Must Haves for a Successful Campaign:
Reach – the number of people an advertising message reaches.
Frequency: the # of times the target audience sees or hears your message – usually expressed as an average
Continuity – consistent messaging (branding)
There are no hard-and-fast rules as to which media is better when developing a campaign.
Audience Measures done in:
Gross impressions: GI – the number of exposures – duplication counts
(ad 1 + ad 2 + ad 3 etc)
Gross Rating Points (GRPs)
The sum of individual ratings in a media plan (specific to broadcast)
If I am reaching 30% of my audience that is 120 GPRs.
It’s an assumed number, not real. What is real is what makes the cash register ring.
Cost per thousand (CPM)
The cost to reach 1,000 units of audience, households or individuals.
Cost per point (CPP)
The cost to reach one percent of the universe (specific to broadcast)
Research is King!
It’s important to conduct your own research, don’t rely on what the media source tells you.
Always back up your media buys!
Examples of research: mail surveys; phone surveys; online or mail-in surveys; intercept interviews; focus groups; in-depth interviews; internet research; literature review
A lot of great work done on generational marketing
You do have to purchase the information but is well-worth it.
Five generations have purchasing power. Go to: genimperative.com.
The Y Generation has no purchasing power but can influence purchasing.
How do you measure success?
- Did you realize an increase in traffic/attendance?
- Did the cash register ring more?
- Did you improve brand recognition?
- Were behaviors changed?
- If you are spending $5,000 a month on advertising, you should be getting that or more back.
Cheray provided a list of questions that enables you to evaluate a media by through scoring:
Frequency; Reach; Waste; Exclusivity; Credibility; Politics; Other considerations
If you score between 75 and 100, go head and do it.
If you have the tools to measure the value of the buy, you can proceed with confidence in saying yes or no. Following the above, backs up your own decision of saying yes or no.
Seeking professional guidance, if you are considering hiring an agency, here are a few questions:
Do they have one or more persons on their staff who understands my business
Are they the right size for my budget?
How responsive are they?
Do you like them?
Q&A:
How do you determine what your adv budget should be in relations to profit?
There are a lot of formulas, but to make it simple, look at the budget and see how much it you need to advertise. Recently, we elected not to use any of a client’s money for advertising because it would have taken too big a bit out of the budget.
What would be the advantage of using a company to make the media buy for you?
Agents often do the work for no more that the cost of the ad. It sometimes saves client money.
Suzanne Dameron
Director, Emerging Communications
Melissa Fach, SEO AWARE
Melissa Fach of SEO Awareis an internet marketing specialist to businesses across the country. Her blog, which addresses internet marketing topics as well as any other current topic of interest to her, attracts visitors from around the globe. Fach presented tips as well as a very candid picture of her professional views on her industry.
Presentation:
SEO is an affordable marketing tool. Her company spends a lot of money on tools to keep up with what people are actually putting into Google. She says designers don’t always build compliant websites. You must create effective meta-tags. People are looking for what they need to click on – they need to be appealing.
Start with a solid foundation:
Put a key word in the domain name if possible.
Register the name for 3-5 years. SEO pays attention to how long you register the name and you are ranked accordingly.
Misspellings are also picked up by Google.
Don’t name photos DSC 14 - Name it a key word if possible.
Instead of Click Here, use an interesting name to create an anchor tag. Click on this Fabulous Opportunity.
Optimize pages:
If you have a personal injury law firm, optimize pages for truck injury and car injury differently.
Title tags are most important to optimize.
SEO examines them closely. They need to be different on every page.
They determine how each page is indexed in the search engines.
Title tags explain what you do on each page.
Her web site is about 400 pages.
Meta description: (the description under your first line)
Using key words from home page is OK. Google is paying more attention to this in the last 4 months. Many use complete sentences which is also OK. There is no hope of doing well with a website that visitors can’t trust.
She recommends that you find an SEO copywriter. They know for example, whether to use the word attorney or lawyer for your SEO. To Google, they are not the same. Google recommends you focus on a good user experience and not on Google. However, you need to write for the search engine as well.
The next time you go to a website, ask yourself what you need to see to trust this website - would you give them your credit card number? She looks for:
“Modern and professional”. When she sees “Git r done”, she leaves.
Copy is the most important thing on a website. That is what builds trust.
Google Analytics can help determine which marketing methods work. It’s free and tells you:
Where your visitors come from....
Which keywords attracted them...
Which site or search engine drives the most traffic to your site...
Which pages get the most traffic - If 5 pages get little traffic either your products aren’t appealing or your page isn’t optimized....
You can learn: what size a person’s screen is, demographics, what time they visited, what site they came from. Information is presented in graphic and data formats.
She has visitors from Iraq and Afghanistan reading her blog. She isn’t certain why but it shows the international level of interest.
Traffic: Pay attention to what works and who is interested. Use the information to determine which products and services are most appealing.
Blogging:
She wasn’t completely convinced about the value until she tried it. Within months she had doubled her client list; a few more months, it had doubled again. It enabled her to have clients in every state and around the globe. She likes to review products: People love products – they love it when you review products.
Google wants content that is a resource for users. They have 10,000 people who work at home and they just visit websites. The higher you’re ranking at Google, the more they trust you. Her website is a highly trusted source for Google.
With social media you can market your blog for free and establish yourself as an authority. You can get visitor and traffic information from Google Analytics. You can cross market your business site with your blog.
Your copy should be able to speak to people who are completely ignorant about your product and those who are experts. You need to be aware that both groups visit.
While discussing services:
Explain the basics…
Explain why your service is needed…
Explain the benefits of using your service…………ask for customer opinions……
Because Google trusts her website, often things she writes that aren’t optimized show up at the top of Google ranking.
Use free local search tools:
Google.com/local/add
Use as many key words as you can.
Sign up for accounts at g mail, yahoo etc. If you take it, no one can take your name and misuse it.
3 more for free:
msn local – https://ssl.search.live.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
best of the WEB local - local.botw.org
Merchant Circle - http://www.merchantcircle.com/signup
Online video marketing:
Google loves video. She advised a dermatologist to put up a video that shows him removing a mole. It placed him at #1. People love to “know stuff.” Most video sharing sites are free. They are now making video sharing site compatible cameras.
Worried about editing or uploading a video? Hire a teenager.
Teenagers can do anything you need.
The trick to using social networking sites:
You need to use different keywords/tags for each site.If you want the video to be passed along, offer something that will attract viewers. StumbleUpon, Propeller, Digg, MySpace, Facebook - all are great marketing tools.
She is accused of giving out too much information out on the blog. However, she says the customer is trying to determine whether to use you. Write about yourself like you are god. If you offer something different, do a comparison post.
She compared two phones on her blog and it drove 25,000 people to that page. Everything needs to convince people that you are the best. In your copywriting and your videos, you must be the best.
People give you 2-3 sec to convince them to stay on your site. Your site needs to be attractive, the text convincing; you have one chance to sell yourself. If your site is not convincing in your field, revamp it.
Blogs with info for you:
DuctTapeMarketing.com
TopRankBlog.com
Problogger. Net (makes over 1 million dollars a year)
SethGodin.typepad.com.
Websites are affordable:
In this economy, a basic website design to promote your services or products is very affordable. She helps people come up with solutions – she will tell you what you need and don’t need. Be careful to sign up with designers who don’t give you access to your meta-tags. Make sure you have access.
Contact her at: Melissa@seoaware.com.
Melissa Fach, SEO Aware
Q&A: Isn’t blogging time consuming?
Blogging can be time-consuming but it can be very effective for marketing. It doesn’t need to be long. People like short bulleted points. You can update 2-3 times a week.
Is it true that sites that link to your site will increase your Google ranking?
Page ranking is important. If a site ranking is 4 or above, it will help your ranking. You want high quality back links. Google is paying a lot of attention to all back links at this time. As many back links as you can get – Facebook, About us.org, Merchant Circle. These are all good, high quality rankings.
How do you know when a security symbol is valid?
Usually it is. But there are people who are really really good. Trust your instincts and call if you have a question. You can go to Google Product and it will list every product and every price.You can check up in this way as well.
Check out Keywordspy.com – lets you look at your competition and which words they are paying for. You can see their ROI and determine whether you want to buy or bid on this - or not.
You can follow up with Melissa at:
SEO Aware - 941-350-3782
Suzanne Dameron
Director, Emerging Communications
