Business with Consumer Exchange

Consumers and Businesses are benefiting alike from the same strategy. The current marketing paradigm shift represented by social networks and viral video has created business with consumer exchange. Viral video is a main power source fueling this era.

Advertisers have added digital video to their marketing strategies using many channels: You tube and other online video distributors, video blogs, social networks, content sponsorships and webisodes. A new marketing report from eMarketer discusses low-involvement consumer products (grocery store items for instance) are the newest sector benefiting from online video. Store bought products requiring no sales people lack the conversational connection many products and services have introduced through personal interaction and social networking. Video and social network interaction give a non-interactive product the chance to go viral, spurring discussion and consumer connection.

“Digital video content, whether delivered through a computer, mobile phone, handheld device or TV monitor, has the potential to ignite two-way conversations between consumers and brands,” said Tobi Elkin, author of the new eMarketer report titled “Consumer Packaged Goods Sector Taps into Online Video.”

Hidden Valley distributed a handful of these webisodes to promote their dressings. They target the health food aficionado, parents looking out for the health of their children and aspiring chefs. In doing so, the webisodes offer insights into improving consumers’ lives by making them more knowledgeable cooks, parents and nutritionists.

Products through video interaction can enrich consumer lives. In another eMarketer study, they asked consumers: “what would you like product interaction to do for you?” The response receiving the most votes was “solve my problems, provide product and service information.”

By providing viral video interaction, products can offer not only problem solutions, but life enrichment, meaning less problems for consumers. The second part of the response receiving the most votes “…provide product and service information,” helps us understand consumers’ belief in the value of exchange; “solve my problems, make my life better and tell me who you are so I can help you.”

This top consumer response is realized with a sound ethical commitment strategy from businesses: interact by enriching consumer lives.  Solve consumer problems and they will return the favor.

Undying Consistency in Marketing

During the reign of certain far eastern, ancient dynasties, clandestine information gathering was primitive, yet deviously brilliant. Such methods viewed through a modern lens seem savage. Yet, methods’ effectiveness lay in intricate design. One such method involved laying a victim down on a table, shackled and immobile. A water dripping mechanism would release drops of water from a high dungeon ceiling. As the water fell, its velocity increased and would splatter on a victim’s forehead. Individually, these drops barely stung. It was the drops’ repeated, consistent and precise pelting that eventually had a severe impact, causing extreme affliction.

Brilliant marketing relies on similar frameworks and different intentions. You want your efforts to have a dramatic impact and create positive emotional connections with customers. We call this building DPC (dramatic positive connection).

For start-ups and small business however, building DPC using one marketing medium and a grand advertisement is not possible. How many Superbowl commercials do you see for these types of companies? Big TV ads on major networks is to marketing what the far eastern torturer removing limbs with the swift swing of a sharp sword, is to torture.

What do both the elaborate water-drop torture method and highly effective, low-budget, small business marketing have in common? –Both require undying consistency for greatest impact.

Building DPC requires your dynamic, specific and superlative message delivered and delivered and then delivered again. When that strategically crafted message is repeatedly delivered, you begin to see the exposure paying off. If you change the message and repeat exposure, it is akin to the water drops falling all over the torture victim’s body, never striking the same place twice and always falling individually; the desired effect is lost. Undying consistency of the same specific message is the key to maximizing DPC.

Walk, then Talk

The obvious concept in this post has cost marketers and customers more valuable time and money than most would care to admit. Millions of dollars are burned, shredded, trashed, drowned and lost because the concept is so obvious, it often goes ignored. Successful marketing connects to peoples’ most powerful desires and essential needs.  More importantly, successful marketing ultimately relies on a great product that is actually wanted and needed. You can talk but without the walk to match, your product will be quickly paralyzed and your message muted.

Brand Performance must live up to, if not exceed, brand hype.

If your claims greatly exceed customers’ experience with a product, expect your brand will be erased, eliminated and soon, extinct.

You may have created the most technologically advanced and exciting picture frame in the world. Your picture frame may also be an mp3 player, a web cam and have telephone capability. It actually may grab people’s attention, but outside of being a one-time holiday gift novelty, nobody wants a two hundred-dollar picture frame that has the same ability as a cell phone but twice the cost and half the portability.

The point is, only market something people really need or has great desirability. Otherwise, all will be wasted. Once you have a product that is wanted and needed, make sure you do more walking than talking.

Emotional Branding

In yesterday’s post we discussed how video originality can pitch your products and services. A clever concept can captivate attention while its main role is to deliver your message. In this post, we will add emotion to the selling deliverance system.

What if a cherry-red Ferrari is on a joy ride where the driver dropped their cell phone while texting and speeding. Simultaneously, a child is crossing the street ahead dropped their favorite doll in the middle of the same road. Our characters both reach down to retrieve their dropped item. If the car didn’t offer a hook, the situation did. The viewer is very relieved and thankful when they find out the Ferrari owner just installed new, “stop on a dime” brake pads. In addition to remembering your brake pads, the viewer may think twice before text driving.

We are not suggesting putting children or animals in harm’s way every time you want to forge a connection to your audience.  They do however, effectively hook an audience by giving viewers a stake in the scenario, making your products memorable.

Emotional connections are what Allstate Insurance relies on: “you’re in good hands.” They present you with a bad car crash and a distraught victim whose nightmare situation is exceptionally handled by an Allstate agent, making the victim feel more secure. Drivers see these scenarios everyday on the side of the road during rush hour. But every driver knows, with a slight miscalculation, “that could be me.” If you’re in good hands however, you are protected.

Emotion is the reason you remember exactly what you were doing during 9/11 or when Kennedy was shot, the first date with the love of your life, or when you made the winning shot at the buzzer during your high-school state championship. Emotion is power and minor events can have equal emotional significance because they can effect how happy people are, how successful, how secure, how intelligent, how wealthy, how stressed, etc.

Add an emotional hook to your original content and be remembered.

100 Million Customers Await

YouTube receives 100 million unique visitors per month. Visitors are oftentimes viewing multiple videos and searching for something unique, creative and undiscovered. Regardless of whether videos serve to market a brands, originally innovative content scores big with users. In TiVo land, viewers cruise through commercials (isn’t that the point? — to do away with commercials). Thus, integrating advertisements with content (Hollywood’s “product placement”) is gaining popularity. The YouTube video seekers are more willing to accept commercialization provided content is captivating. Users are inviting brands into their lives in exchange for quality entertainment.

This is exciting news for small business.

In a world where Susan Boyle’s performance on “Britain Got Talent” can attract 85 million views and watching little drugged-up David after a dental visit, can nab 45 million, a clever message with a unique delivery can reach an infinite number of people.

The trick is creating something clever and unique that aids your message and sticks in people’s minds. Too many companies focus on the bells and whistles of wildly outlandish video content that does not connect to the brand. When users finish watching one such commercial, they may remember the 58 seconds of baby’s rollerblading around black top, hopping fences and skating on handrails, but it does not connect to the 2 seconds of brand identification. You’ve succeeded in turning some entertainment-seeking heads, but failed the efficiency test of associating your name with your service. The bells and whistles of original content are important, but they must compliment who you are and what your product does to make customers smarter, healthier, happier, richer, safer and more successful.

This is the challenge of concept design. While potentially daunting, those who conquer shall unlock a prosperous new world that may actually lead to the something rarely discussed in assessing business success…fun.

What’s in a Company Name?

“What’s in name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell just as sweet.” The famous Shakespeare line that described names as being unimportant. Slap the name sewage plant on a rose and it still smells the same. However, in the world of branding, the opposite holds true.

The sweetest sound in the world is your company name.

Names evoke experiences; the belief systems we’ve created around certain words. Words can conjure strong feelings making them powerful marketing tools.

When our company name is heard, we want potential customers to swell with happy feelings. We want our name to brighten customers’ day providing them a boost of energy. If a name can give potential customers an idea of who you are and what you sell upon its utterance, it serves as a mini-advertisement in itself. That is taking a lemon and making refreshing lemonade with a side of delicious lemon meringue pie.

If your company name is rhythmic, easily pronounced, memorable and describes what you sell, it passes the efficiency test. You have created an mini-advertisement that will serve the company well.

So, what’s in a name?…lots of sales.

Of course, some companies come up with obscure, nebulous names and manage to find great success. In the next post, we will discuss why and how.

Define “The Best” and Be #1

In the previous post “Branding In People’s Programs,” we said:

People think in pictures and the most memorable examples in any given specialty are stored and readily available for use. “The Most Memorable” example in the proper specialty, is #1. People can remember the second most memorable and maybe the third, but they hold a unique appreciation for #1. #1 is the victor and in business, to the victor go the spoils.

#1 is transcendent. It is divine.

In the bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins and his team of researchers describe how every great company in the history of the world clearly identified one specific area that they could be The Best at. Companies such as Abbott, Circuit City, Gillette, Kroger, Walgreens and Wells Fargo realistically evaluated the competitive market and gradually concentrated their efforts on a concept that emerged from a collision of ideas: what they could be the best in the world at, what drove their economic engines and what they were most passionate about.

In the world of small business and start-ups, “the best in the world” may seem to lack relevance. Here lies our concept: your “world” and “the best” is whatever you define it as.

Your world could consist of a regional competitive market in a given area. Strive to be the best in that region. Your world may expand from there.

“The best” is a creative, pliable concept as well. Being the best in a general specialty as a small business is overly daunting. If you are an entrepreneur with a great tasting soda consisting of natural ingredients and produced using recycled materials, trying to compete with Coke and Pepsi in the “Soft Drink” specialty is a death sentence. You have to change the rules of the game and redefine a specialty. Recreate a specialty for your product by creating subheadings to add to the specialty category. Be the leader in “Green Organic Energy Beverages.”

In the next post, we will discuss more about defining your specialty.

Branding in Customers’ Program

Some people and companies admire the best, others dream of being the best and some just are simply the best. But the best at what? What is your speciality and who are the top 3 players in the game?

We all have photographic memories. We have these photo reading programs in our heads. Some programs just have more memory and work faster than others. Regardless of how fast your machine works, you think in an organized, pictorial way. Your program organizes pictures and when the subject is discussed, your program innately opens that subject’s folder revealing its contents in the form of pictures.

Don’t believe me? Think about these subjects and identify what first enters your mind before you move to the next sentence.

SODA!

Give it a second….did you see a picture of a liquid that looks like Coke or Pepsi in some form? Maybe you even saw the brand name itself.

LUXURY CAR!

Do you see a suave vehicle cruising smoothly down the road. Maybe it was dark and had a Mercedes logo on the hood. One more…

THE BEST AIRLINE TO FLY

Were you in the terminal checking in or on the runway viewing your favorite airline logo on a plane?

The point is, great marketing for great brands inject themselves into a speciality folder in your picture program. They are the leaders in this speciality because they infiltrated that speciality file in your organizational program. There isn’t room in these files for more than two, maybe three brands. The first brand your program opens when a speciality topic is discussed however, has established themselves as the leaders, The Best.

That is great branding. In coming posts, I will begin to dissect branding and how these products and services come to own a file in our pictorial programs.

Techniques for Marketing; What People Want

It is the job of Media Brats Marketing to answer the following question: What will move a consumer to take interest in a product or service if  they have no prior knowledge of it? Let’s assume the product or service has value to the average consumer. Let’s assume it is something they are inclined to purchase given it is easily accessible and noticeable. But what if the product or service has only a moment to gain the attention of a consumer. What if they have 7 seconds to create an impression that leads a consumer to further investigate or move on? We are bombarded by information and sales pitches all day. We dont like to expend energy unless there is something beneficial waiting for us, a payoff. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

But just because we constantly wade through informational rivers doesnt mean we ignore the current. It is the current we crave, the constant movement and flow. This is why we jump in the river to begin with. This is crucial to understand: We love information. Information has the power to change us, to make us better, more interesting, more educated and more powerful. Knowing this, we can find the right currents and float with the consumer, not past them.

Here is the payoff of the article. Consumers want to be educated, to be informed. They want their lives enriched. If your product or service can appeal to consumers’ craving for informational enlightenment, you’ve gained an audience. You have a hot lead. In this case, you have created a connection. Everyone’s favorite subject is themself. Bring further meaning to a consumer’s life through information and you connect with them.

Connect then sell. That’s the successful formula. That’s what the consumer wants.

Birmingham Video Marketing

As we discuss marketing possibilities with an ever increasing group of businesses in Birmingham, video marketing is the recurring topic of conversation. Audiences can be captivated by great video marketing campaigns. In our experience to this point, clients, potential clients and interested parties describe the Birmingham video marketing option as difficult to access. An initial question that always arises is: why are other Birmingham video production services  so expensive?

As we’ve witnessed, creative viral marketing can reach millions of people, growing your customer base exponentially. Most of these campaigns hinge on social media to drive their success, but it is short lived. Once an audience has befriended a fan page, tweeted about the new product and visited the product’s site once or twice, the enthusiasm grows stale and the audience moves on. Viral marketing relying on social networking is important, but it delivers traffic to a site in a flash-burst, then disappears.

Like buying the trendy clothing of the moment, individual social marketing campaigns don’t fade, they disappear. Consumers/”friends” are bombarded with information at the speed of a search engine and have ever decreasing attention spans.

This brings us back to Birmingham Video Marketing. A recent study conducted by a top online marketing consultant found that people are 3 times as likely to click on an ad displaying a video as opposed to text. With video, you expand your ad’s outreach by 3x! A short (:30) ad with a unique plot line that captivates your customer’s attention does so by connecting to one or more of the viewer’s senses. There are 5 possibilities to appeal to. A great video will easily do this, the odds of connection are far better than to text alone. Text only captures your sight, but usually takes more time and energy to investigate. The viral marketing video has significantly more potential to fill a gap in the consumer’s long term memory than any flash-burst of social media or text.

A great marketing video requires creative thinking and highly calculated decisions, motivated by this creativity. Great equipment is a tremendous asset in proving legitimacy to a viewer, although not always a requirement. The reason for expensive quotes then, is the skilled trade of messaging through video marketing. It is not simply point and shoot with the camera, but requires a deeper understanding of how each aspect of a video connects with a viewer. The true potential of the viewer connection, customer to product relationship establishment and business growth because of it, lies in simulated celluloid.

We understand this. Our goal is to increase your company’s value. If we do that, we’ve increased our own. We believe financial gains will follow in future business. We focus on building relationships and business’ value through marketing videos. We are not slaves to pricing for this reason and are able to accommodate almost all budgets. Do not allow a high price quote from another Birmingham video marketing company to deter your business from reaching its full potential. This is why we are here.