Do You REALLY Understand Consumers?

If you can confidently answer this question in the affirmative, then you probably already know what your customers want and need.

Or do you?

Have you gathered and analyzed quantitative and qualitative data that indicates not only what consumers tell you they want and need, but also how consumers actually behave?

Consumer insight simply means having a good grasp on what consumers want, need, think, and say about the products and services they are willing to spend their money on. Of course, the trick is to figure out the most authentic way to access this information, and then the best way to use it.

Some companies have mastered the art of achieving great consumer insight, and then incorporating their findings into wildly successful marketing and advertising campaigns. For example, Nabisco discovered that their customers loved to dunk Oreo cookies in milk, and this became the cornerstone of many of their most memorable television commercials. And Unilever identified a unique way to connect with their target market by celebrating the beauty of women of all sizes and ages with the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, and the twenty city Dove Self-Esteem workshop tour.

Many organizations dedicate considerable resources to this business of understanding consumers. So how do you find out what consumers really think and say about your business? Join us on April 14th to learn more about this topic. Click here for more information.

Keri Glover

Social Media Pays: People More Likely to Buy from Brands they Follow

A new study from market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies shows that social media might actually pay off—in real dollars in addition to the traditional branding and influence lift. The survey of over 1500 consumers showed that they were more likely to buy from and recommend brands they follow on Twitter and Facebook.

51% of those surveyed said they were more likely to buy from a brand after following them on Facebook; 67% said they were more likely to buy after following on Twitter. Brands also got a boost in recommendations: 60% of Facebook fans and 79% of Twitter followers were more likely to recommend a brand to their friends.

This is only natural, says eConsultancy:

The most popular reason people follow brands in social media is to receive discounts. But there were also many people who responded that they follow as a customer of the brand and to show their support of it. On Twitter, that reason was less popular. Only 2% of respondents followed a brand to show their support. More often, they are looking for discounts, new information and exclusive content.

That makes a lot of sense, as Facebook’s fan ability is more geared toward letting users express their appreciation for something.

And here’s our grain of salt: this is a survey. This only shows what people think they’re doing. It may be that people don’t want to admit they’re only following Nike to look cool. However, with questions like these, I’d assume there’s at least a little boost for the brands in terms of dollars and recommendations.

What do you think? Are these people accurately reporting their spending and recommendations?

This blog was reposted from http://www.marketingpilgrim.com, and originally posted by Jordan McCollum

CAMA Board Members Attend Regional Retreat

Two Charlotte AMA board members attended the recent two-day AMA Regional Summit, held in Richmond, VA, in early March. Sarah Burkhart, incoming Secretary for 2010-2011 and Randy Mintken, incoming President for 2010-2011, met with 30 other AMA Professional Chapters from around the mid-Atlantic region to share best practices and discuss successful strategies for member outreach and retention.

Photo caption: AMA Professional Chapter Board members attend the AMA Regional Summit in Richmond, VA.

Pennies and dollars

"Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves."

I'm not sure this is true. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if you watch the dollars, you don't have to worry so much about pennies.

Big brands don't sweat the small expenses. They don't hassle about a return, or a little coupon fraud or the last penny per square foot on the rent in a prime location. In fact, they understand that there's a powerful honest signal sent when you don't worry about the tiny expenses. It shows confidence.

My first business was running a ski club from my high school to a nearby ski area. Most of the other clubs rented expensive coach buses. I rented school buses. That one shift saved thousands of dollars. As a result, I had plenty of money to spend on snacks for the bus, no hassles about refunds if you broke your leg... it was easy to be generous because I'd saved so much on the bus.

So many small businesspeople are crippled by their relationship with money. I know... I used to window shop at restaurants and then go home and eat Spaghetti-Os. The thing is, if you run out of money you lose the game. That's a given. But what's the best strategy for not running out of money?

I don't think the answer is to worry insanely about little expenses (saving $20 on your blogging expenses in exchange for distracting ads, for example.) In fact, too much worrying about cash is the work of the lizard brain, it's a symptom of someone self-sabotaging the work.

The thing to do is invest in scary innovations, large leaps, significant savings. Instead of renting a skimpy booth at the big trade show and scrimping on all the extras, why not rent a limo and drive the key buyers around town, or sponsor the awards luncheon? When you skimp all the time, you signal that you're struggling.

This content was reposted from Seth Godin's blog, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Marketing Through the Recession to Recovery: The Charlotte AMA Focuses on Strategies for Business Growth March 10th

In 2008, John Doerr, one of America's most famous venture capitalists, called the current recession "the greatest economic opportunity of our lifetime." In today's economic environment, it's even more critical to demonstrate marketing's impact on organizational growth and the bottom line. To do so, marketers must learn how to reframe their conversations and build a business case that resonates with top executives.

Join the Charlotte AMA at our March meeting as a panel of CEOs discuss how the worst of times for the economy as a whole can often be the best of times for individual firms to create value by offering products or services that allow customers to cut costs and retain their profitability.

Learn how you and your company can benefit from the opportunities your competitors are leaving on the table as they pull back in the current economy.

To learn more and to register, please visit: http://tiny.cc/eZ5qn

Introducing Seed Nurturing

One thing you'll notice about most lead nurturing campaigns is the fact that they usually take place after prospects land on your site and enter your database. However, what happens when qualified prospects visit your site or social media sites anonymously where you don't necessarily have their names or e-mails?

This is where seed nurturing comes into play. Seed nurturing is the process of building relationships with qualified prospects before you have their contact information.

It comes down to this: prospects are educating themselves long before you actually identify them by landing on your corporate web site as anonymous visitors, and researching your products and services through third-party resources, word-of-mouth recommendations, and social media sites. Just because you can't identify these individuals doesn't mean they aren't qualified prospects — and because of this, you must nurture them just as you would the known contacts in your database.

If you succeed at this, you will stay top of mind with your prospects as they educate themselves and move through the early stages of their buying process. As a result, they will come to you when they are ready to engage with a sales rep, and you will create a steady flow of highly qualified inbound leads. If you ignore the requirement to build relationships with these very early stage prospects, you're yielding this opportunity to more agile competitors who will scoop these savvy prospects out from under you.

Seed nurturing best practices

Personalize interactions with anonymous visitors

When prospects visit your website anonymously, you can and should still take advantage of the visit to deepen the relationship with them with relevant and personalized content. You may not know their name and email address, but you certainly can know a great deal about their interests and behaviors. First time visitors can see different offers than repeat visitors. Visitors that use specific search terms can see different promotions that generic visitors. Visitors who visit specific pages and show specific interests can see even more specialized content and offers. Using these techniques, you can design “drip marketing” campaigns that help buyers educate themselves before they ever share their contact information with you. For more on this, see the on-demand webinar Supercharge your Demand Generation with Personalization (an oldie but a goodie).

Make valuable content freely available on your site and over social media.

By eliminating the need for registration in order to obtain your whitepapers, eBooks, and other valuable content, you are making the effort to build relationships with people before you have them in your database. You may be thinking to yourself, “If I do this, I'll be wasting valuable offers on people I'll never be able to identify.” On the contrary, you will strengthen your readership, and these dedicated yet anonymous leads will likely come to you as inbound leads once their levels of interest are high enough. Moreover, whether you like it or not, in most cases the information is already out there on social sites, so you may as well embrace the trend rather than fight it. David Merman Scott writes more on this topic in Say NO to squeezing your buyers.

Use social media to build a rock-solid reputation that builds credibility and trust with prospects.

One of the biggest obstacles in the B2B purchasing process is the feeling of risk that overcomes B2B buyers, causing them to behave irrationally during the decision-making process. Seed nurturing plays a key role in diminishing this risk by acting as a vehicle for you to build your reputation as a thought leader and gain the trust of early stage prospects. For example, you can use Twitter to inform people of your views on developments in your industry or show your ability to solve specific business pains by becoming an “Expert” on LinkedIn. B2B buyers trust thought leaders who can demonstrate they understand buyer problems and how to solve them. While a reputation of thought leadership will never be as “risk-reducing” as a personal referral, it is a great way to build awareness and increase your chances that the prospect will respond to future demand generation efforts.

Conclusion

While these ideas represent a departure from what you may consider traditional lead generation techniques, they will help you plant the seeds for highly qualified prospects to reach out to you when they are ready, and once this happens, you can rest easy knowing that you've nurtured them appropriately and gained their trust as you would through a traditional drip marketing campaign.

How have you incorporating seed nurturing into your marketing mix?

This blog was reposted from Modern B2B Sales on http://blog.marketo.com/blog/, and originally posted by Patrick Donnelly

Make the Connection: Attend the Charlotte AMA's orientation and connection event February 3rd

Whether you've recently joined the Charlotte AMA, or have been a member for awhile and want to get the most out of your membership, please plan to join us at our February 3rd orientation and connection event. It’ll take place from 6 – 7:30 p. m., at the offices of Luquire George Andrews (4201 Congress Street, Charlotte, NC 28209).
Following the orientation, get to know other Charlotte AMA members by joining us downstairs at the Village Tavern Restaurant for some social networking time.
Take a moment now to RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/yak9ppn
Questions? Please contact Christine Eubanks and eubanks@lgaadv.com