Social Media Marketing: Lessons for Success Part 3

5. Be first to market if possible. Conventional wisdom says being first to market creates a competitive advantage.  Reality is more complicated.   Market opportunities are constantly opening and closing, and a hit today could be a dud a year earlier or a yawning "me too" business a year later.  You gain the advantage of locking in customers, suppliers or intellectual property.  Entrepreneurs also need to launch before an opportunity closes.

6.  Marketing is key - you need to attract and retain customers.  Mars, the company behind brands like Snickers, Pedigree, Whiskas and Skittles, was celebrated as the Advertiser of the Year at the Cannes Lions 2012 International Festival of Creativity.

Since Mars landed its first Cannes Lion in 1990, the company's commercials have won 77 Lions across categories, which include 11 Gold Lions and a Radio Grand Prix in 2007 for the Snickers "Hoedown" ad.

In making the announcement, Cannes Lions CEO Philip Thomas noted that Mars has won Lions for work in countries that include France, the U.S., the U.K., Brazil, South Africa, Portugal and Chile, among others. He said the festival’s recognition is “a testament to a company which truly embraces creativity and demands outstanding work from its agencies.”

Bruce McColl, the chief marketing officer at Mars, will accept the honors on June 23 during the film, film craft, branded entertainment & content, and titanium & integrated Lions awards. Mars works with Omnicom agencies BBDO and DDB.

Social Media Marketing: Lessons for Success Part 2

3. Understand everything you market and post on line.  How could Coca-Cola have allowed anyone working for them to post a reference to a disgusting pornographic movie on a fourteen year-old girl’s wall – a movie that girl later searched for on the internet to find out what the obscure status update meant.

So where did Coca-Cola go wrong, and what can you do to avoid something like this happening to your own brand? The answer is quite simple.  Never, never allow any “social marketing agency”, no matter how edgy they seem and no matter how often they tell you that they’re “experts,” post or publish anything in your company or brand’s name without checking it first. 

4. You do not control the voting process.  Trying to control the outcome of a contest by disqualifying a charity you do not like (e.g., JPMorgan Chase & Company rejected Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Marijuana Policy Project) or violating your own rules by giving preference to another (see Pepsi) will backfire.  The Pepsi Refresh Contest made a mistake by not following its own rules, but moving swiftly to acknowledge it, fix it, and moved on. This was failing informatively.

In fact, it might wipe out more than whatever was gained by organizing the contest in the first place.  In turn, the damage to your brand and reputation can be huge.

Social Media Marketing: Lessons for Success Part 1

1. Be Transparent. Social media is not starting but following a trend.  Social media is known for its transparency and speed, but that also means that your mistakes can be very visible. Being up front is a good way to start recovering, says Harvard Business Review.

 

One of the key benefits of social media is that your messages can reach more people faster. But this also means that your mistakes can too.

Taco Bell recently combated a traditional attack (a class action lawsuit charging that the restaurant's meat isn't really beef) with new media techniques.  On Twitter, Taco Bell linked to comedian Steven Colbert's musings on the controversy; on Facebook, they offered free tacos, encouraging customers to make up their own minds about the beef in question.   And while overall sales have taken a hit, its seven million plus loyal Facebook "friends" are as enthusiastic as ever — and the lawsuit was dropped.

So what have we learned?   Success is no longer about fancy packaging and carefully controlled messages.  When everyone can see what you're doing, the most essential values are transparency, honesty and credibility.  You win by matching your image with reality, acting with integrity, and sincerely apologizing when you're wrong. 

2. Customer Service Response Time: Act quickly to fix disgruntled customers.  In 2009, Domino's was blindsided by a YouTube video showing two disgruntled employees contaminating the food they were about to deliver. It was a PR nightmare for the company, until they fired back through social media — uploading their own YouTube video explaining what they were doing to fix the situation and creating a special Twitter account to specifically handle customers concerns about this issue.   Their quick and appropriate responses directly to the people most concerned allowed Domino's  to diffuse what could have been a catastrophic event.