While people have always talked about the companies they do business with, today instead of telling five friends in a bar about that bad customer service experience, or crappy product, they’re online telling 50, 500, 5000….

You can’t afford to ignore that. Social media is here to stay. Some of your customers are undoubtedly out there looking to engage with you through social media today.

The next generation of consumers won’t just expect to engage with you through online social channels, they’ll demand it. Will you be ready?

Image via Wikipedia

As an independent professional service provider looking to succeed online you’re going to encounter one fundamental problem. You – your time, your skills, your personality, your charisma – are not scaleable.

No matter how well you market yourself, and how much business you bring in, you can only do so much of that work yourself. Once you’re fully booked, you’re fully booked – you can’t take on more work until you stop doing something else.

How to scale your online business

There is one absolutely vital thing that you do own, however, which is valuable and truly scaleable: that’s your knowledge. By packaging your expertise effectively, and turning it into a product rather than a professional service, you do two things:

1. You make access to your expertise more affordable to a much wider audience
2. After the initial investment of creating your knowledge product you’re free to sell it to as many people as you can without much additional demand on your time and resources.

But how do you go about developing a product based on your knowledge and expertise?

Dave Navarro, AKA “The Launch Coach”, has built a successful online business showing people just like you how to do exactly that!

I’ve been working through Dave’s excellent free online marketing workbooks in the LaunchCoach Library. The workbooks take you step-by-step through:

• 7 steps you can take to playing a much bigger online game
• 7 steps to networking yourself to A-Listers
• 7 simple income streams that you can actually create
• How to start making real money with your product in just 3 days

The thing I like most about Dave’s style is that he avoids the usual marketing hype of your typical online “gurus”, and gets straight to the meaty stuff that’s really valuable to people like you and me who are looking to turn our expertise into a scaleable online business.

I’m not a "guru."  I’m just a guy who’s pretty darned
good at teaching people how to do things in a simple
step-by-step, you-can-do-this manner.

Dave Navarro – The Launch Coach

The free stuff that Dave offers is amazing – but if you’re looking to fast-track your online product creation and promotion skills, you should check out his latest offering

Two downloadable Workshops — 10 great training modules — that show you how he built his own online business, and that could be just the catalyst you need to kick start your online business.

I’m certainly going to check it out. You’ll find all the details on Creating Products that Sell & Building a Responsive List on Dave’s site.

Toyota teamed with comedy director Jody Hill to create this creative series of online videos featuring a couple of self-absorbed parents and their young family with the only vehicle that can match their awesomeness, the Toyota Sienna.

The ads seems to be resonating with parents and are generating a lot of buzz through this clever hip hop parody. Check out the full series of Swagger Wagon videos here… and watch for this one cropping up in 2010 online marketing awards later this year.

Check out this video of Damian in action, and be sure to roll by the Simply Zesty blog for lots of social media insight from Ireland’s leading social media agency.

But as Chris Pirillo points out at LeWeb 2009, the tools are NOT the community – the community is the people using the tools, the connections between them.

My favourite quote from Chris’s presentation:

If you believe a community is a tool, then you yourself are a tool.

Communities aren’t about tools and they’re not about technology – communities are about people, and understanding people is far more valuable than understanding the underlying platforms and technology when it comes to being a part of and harnessing the potential of online communities.

We’re sourcing case studies from various places, and will feature a mixture of different online campaigns in the book, from award-winners to more obscure but successful campaigns from all sorts of businesses spanning a variety of industries.

We’re a bit short of time to truly crowdsource all the case studies for this edition – but we are looking for your nominations to help us identify truly exceptional examples of online marketing that we may miss through other channels.

You can use this form to submit your favourite campaign for consideration. We’ll let you know if it goes on to be featured in the book.

Thanks a million for your input.

Understanding Digital: CREATIVE will take place at the National College of Ireland in the city centre from 4-7 pm, followed by a drinks reception and  an opportunity for informal networking.  We’re hosting the event in conjunction with the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design (ICAD) as part of Design Week 2009.

For just €50 (€10 for current ICAD members) you get to share the expertise and insight of four leading digital creative minds.

Places are limited, and at that price they’re going fast so register now to secure yours.

The speakers

As well as Damian and myself… who’ll be hosting he event… our panel of speakers will explore how digital media can expand the scope of creative marketing online, facilitate interaction and ultimately improve the bottom line.

We’ll hear from Dave Birss, Creative Digital Director at Ogilvy London; Matt Butterworth, Managing Director of Folk Creative; Nick Suckley, Managing Partner of Agenda 21 Digital and Robin Grant, founder of We are Social.

It’s a line-up that Damian and I are very excited about. It promises to be a great event, and the drinks reception afterwards, in association with Design Week sponsor Bombay Sapphire will be a great opportunity to meet and chat with us, with the speakers and a great mix of people from inside and outside the digital media sector.

We hope you can make it, and look forward to welcoming you on the 05 November.

Image by HubSpot via Flickr

Social media is the buzzword in online marketing today.

It’s still in its embryonic stages, and not nearly as critical to online success, or indeed as measurable, as some more established online marketing channels (search springs to mind as the online marketing granddaddy that dwarfs all others in terms of potential ROI and measurability), but it is gaining momentum fast.

People are flocking to social media sites around the globe, using them to connect more effectively with more of their peers, to share, entertain and communicate. And of course where the masses lead, the marketers are never far behind.

While Social Media may not be as fundamental as an effective search marketing strategy to your company’s online success (yet), there’s are some crucial differences. You can’t really compare the two directly, because they’re trying to achieve two very different objectives.

Search marketing is focussed on driving targeted traffic to your site, and ultimately converting that traffic into paying customers,  social media is more about nurturing and building ongoing relationships surrounding your brand. It’s about taking that first contact — whether it comes through a search engine, word of mouth, social media referral, or perhaps even a newspaper ad (yes, it still happens ) — and building it into a lasting, mutually beneficial relationship.

Of course there’s crossover here: some brands use search for more subliminal marketing like brand awareness and social media is used for direct marketing… but by and large, for most businesses, the distinction outlined above holds true.

Finding the Social Media Win-Win

Social media marketing is all about finding a “win-win”. Get it right and the viral potential of online networks can do wonders for your business. Get it wrong, and that same viral effect can be devastating.

That’s one of the things that makes social media a scary place for traditional marketers, who tend to be more used to shouting than listening. The conversational aspect of social media marketing… the fact that you have to listen, adapt and respond to what people are saying about your brand in practically real time… can be daunting.

There’s a steep learning curve, and because it’s all so new there’s no “manual” to speak of… everyone, even the apparent pandemic of “Social Media Experts” you’ll find on Twitter, are just feeling their way here, whatever they may claim.

In Understanding Digital Marketing we explored a few of the Social Media Rules of Engagement – some common-sense guidelines to help you navigate a course through the social media jungle. But talking to my own children recently, I realised that good social media etiquette isn’t a million miles away from the way any sensible parent teaches their child to play nicely with their peers.

Back to Social Media Basics

Think about it… as parents we teach our children to share, to listen, to respect other people’s opinions while understanding the value of their own.

Sounds a lot like a roadmap for a successful foray into Social Media if you ask me. So why, as adults, do we struggle to apply the “social rules” we mastered in the school playground when we venture online?

• Sharing is caring: Barney, may be as irritating as hell, but he also has a point. Sharing is at the heart of social media interaction… so provide useful content, links and comments that add real value and are relevant to the conversation.
• Show a little respect: we’re always telling children to respect other people’s views, and that even if they don’t match our own, they are no less valid. That’s just as relevant online.
• Play nicely: wherever people congregate, be it the school playground, the pub or a Facebook Fan Page, there are going to be disparate personalities, some of which will clash. We try to teach our children to work through their differences and to be polite and courteous. It’s no different online.
•  Rules are rules: another important lesson children learn when they’re young is to play by the rules… be they the household rules we set as parents, the school’s rules, rules at the local swimming pool or the rules of a family board game. It’s no different when the places we visit are virtual.

Interacting with other people is tricky, but we’ve been doing it for a long time. Yes, some are better at it than others… in the pub, at work or online, but this isn’t rocket science. We all know the basics… we;ve been doing it since pre-school!

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

Time to breathe a bit of life back into this blog.

Between writing and promoting Understanding Digital Marketing, work with SOHO Solo, Career Moves and other editorial commitments things have been pretty hectic. Damian and I have also just signed publishing contracts with Kogan Page to do a follow up book. So, interesting times ahead.

Distilling the very best in online marketing for you

The new book, which is set for delivery to the publishers by 31 January 2010, and should hit the shelves the middle of next year, will focus on how organisations around the world are harnessing integrated online marketing to drive their business forward, improve their ROI and enrich their relationship with their customers.

We’re in the process of putting together an international panel of online marketing experts – acknowledged leaders in their respective fields – to help us select the very best examples of online marketing in the world today. Together we’ll deconstruct them and analyse the lessons that others can learn from these innovative campaigns.

Stay tuned for more updates, and regular online marketing content here and on the soon to be re-vamped “Understanding Digital” website.

Is Social Media killing E-Mail Marketing?

No, is the short answer!

I was reading the post I’ve linked to above over on Denise Cox’s e-mail marketing blog, and found myself nodding in agreement. Rumours of e-mail marketing’s imminent demise at the hands of social media are grossly exaggerated. There are problems, certainly, but E-Mail is still a crucial part of a constantly evolving marketing mix for large and small businesses.
In the first chapter of “Understanding Digital marketing” we point out that throughout history the emergence of new marketing channels never really supersedes the established ones. Rather they augment them, offering marketers and business owners more scope to connect with their customers… and those same customers more choice in how they engage with brands and businesses.

Here’s a short extract from the book:

Technological advances have punctuated the evolution of advertising throughout history, each fundamentally altering the way businesses could communicate with their customers. Interestingly, however, none of these ground-breaking developments superseded those that came before. Rather they served to augment them, offering marketers more diversity, allowing them to connect with a broader cross section of consumers. In today’s sophisticated age of paid search placement, keyword-targeted pay-per-click advertising and social networking, you’ll still find the earliest forms of advertising alive and well.

Stroll through any market, practically anywhere in the world – from the food markets of central London to the bazaars of North Africa, to the street markets of India – and you’ll be greeted by a cacophony of noise as vendors use their voices to vie for the attention of passing customers. The human voice, the first marketing medium in history, still going strong in the digital age.

From “Understanding Digital Marketing”, Chapter 1, Going digital — the evolution of marketing, p. 4

It’s getting more complicated out there, for sure, but with that complexity comes remarkable opportunity to develop enduring, mutually beneficial relationships that can deliver long-lasting results.

For the vast majority of businesses maintaining those relationships depends on the most established online communications medium of them all: e-mail. While it’s dominance might wane gradually as relience on e-mail is diluted by the steady adoption of other communications technologies, it’s stell set to play a pivotal role in the marketing mix for many years to come.