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Personally, my Black Friday wasn’t as exciting as a Wal-Mart stampede, but Online sales during the Black Friday weekend topped $1B, showing incredible growth – a 26% growth year over year. This is during a period where overall Black Friday sales overall of $11.2B fell 1.8%. The two overriding stories from Black Friday are as one blogger put it, mobile impresses and social depresses.

Social Media Sales Down

Most of the articles regarding social media’s ineffectiveness cite an IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark from this week that found that social media in general fell in importance as a channel to online sales.

In fact , Twitter generated zero percent of Black Friday Sales! Much of IBM’s echo chamber focused on the thought that Twitter’s influence could be more general, influencing decisions or helping to create demand but not on the direct path to sales. This seems like a parallel to the complaint that retails outlets have about being used as evaluation and testing centers for sales that go to online vendors. I guess the first lesson is that it pays to be at the bottom of that funnel, not the top, since a company must capture value in addition to just creating it.

The other lesson is about integration of sales channels and media. Too many Facebook and Twitter pages have difficulty striking a balance between directing users to sales and an engaging (not irritating) experience.

Mobile Sales Up

On the other hand, Black Friday was another exemplification of the growth in mobile sales. The most purchased items included books, clothing, and e-books. Competition from price-checking applications and mobile commerce applications has been around for some time. However, the reasons for late adoption cited by these studies seem like they haven’t changed in some time: awkward shopping experience on the phone, concerns over credit card info, and poor connections.

Although, maybe one could have predicted all this by comparing Apple and Facebook stock prices .

The final weeks of the US presidential campaign pulled out all the stops. Brilliant advertisements in every form of video available targeted made for every voter segment. The Obama team’s internet presence, again, was far superior to the republicans who put the ‘Old’ in GOP. Here are some the best strategies displayed in the Obama team’s online presence.

Make the call to action easy and not annoying

The Obama video’s made an interesting use of links on its Youtube videos. Instead of Youtube’s standard 10-point Arial font grey balloons, the link buttons were superimposed on top of graphics contained in the video. The screen shot shows one example, but there were at least five or so variants, some pointing to websites that corresponded to particular segments or campaign themes, which were relevant to the video content. The buttons always had the same look and feel, but were just different enough to be noticeable (or may just be the result of experimentation). Interestingly, the Donate and Sign Up buttons don’t really show up on the non-partisan videos likely targeted at undecided voters. (The links have been removed since the campaign is over).

These were undoubtedly less irritating than traditional interruption advertising and certainly less desperate in tone than most of the political advertising I’ve received.  The links bring you directly to donating or signing up without having to fuss with URLs and navigating a website, making that purchase funnel as smooth as possible.

 

Mass Niche Marketing

The Obama team has produced thousands of videos over the years. It’s fascinating how they cater to different states, campaign themes, demographic segments, emotional triggers, and even different languages. They are aiming to get the advantages of extremely targeted marketing, but they still want to sell to everyone.

No longer limited to traditional carpet-bombing television advertising, they can provide a set of sharable viral-quality videos that are searchable or organized by theme. And the multiple themes continues into campaign websites as well. The Keeping His Word Youtube theme connects to keepinghisword.com, non-partisan videos tie to vote.barackobama.com, partisan messages link to barackobama.com or barackobama.com/joe-biden, and so on.

Political marketers now have new challenges, such as keeping their message consistent. For example, you wouldn’t want to get caught saying one thing (such as 47%) to one audience and another thing to everyone else. With the fast moving world of presidential politics, the site does take videos down if the messages are getting stale or may now work against the Obama team if some underlying factor has changed such as public opinion or the unemployment rate.

Coordinated Endorsements

At least 30% of Obama’s Youtube videos don’t really feature either Obama or Romney. Many of the videos feature an endorsement from a celebrity, campaign worker, or ‘regular’ person that focuses on a single issue or segment. These videos, while produced by the campaign, leverage the most influential members of Obama supporters.

Endorsers perform the same function as creators. They are effective at utilizing the social influence of the endorser. I can’t think of any brands that would get as many celebrity endorsements as democratic presidential candidates, but it is fascinating how well done these are. LGBT celebrities discuss LGBT issues, a Miami mayor speaks to latinos, Will Ferrell produces a sharable video for frat boys, and countless veterans and regular folks shares their stories. At no time do you start to think that people are being pressured to say media-polished statements, but at the same time they regularly hit their key campaign messages and target segments.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton and John Kerry and other politicians take on the role of critics of Romney, so that Obama can focus on positive music-backed speeches.

In addition, as this From the Field video shows, the Obama campaign had an army of volunteers phoning up undecided votes across the country. That Obama team is also dominating conversations on every social media platform in existence.

In short, while these are produced will billions of dollars of backing and by a single group, they communicate that Obama is backed by a community of regular Americans.

Internet marketing often raises significantly privacy issues.

Facebook routinely receives negative press for the amount of information it collects and sells to advertisers. Facebook users repeatedly get denied jobs or even communion, for things they post online. Stories such as the FBI’s use of email monitoring of affairs of high-ranking officials or the issues involving Chinese state-owned companies can scare consumers from participating in social media, regardless of the evangelism and optimism of social media mavens.

Marketers need to understand that they have a fiduciary responsibility to the consumers from whom they are collecting data.

Impacts

Privacy concerns can cause consumers to refuse to participate in internet marketing, such as online discussion forums. Social media tools allow rather intimate communication with consumers, and marketers should be careful with how they are used. Think about social media for products that people aren’t very proud of using them or where your target market is not technology early adopters J

As always, if marketing is done poorly it will hurt the brand. But privacy concerns caused by marketing efforts can cause people to become suspicious of the product, perhaps leaving them feeling vulnerable, and less willing to engage with the brand’s products if it requires disclosing personal information. For example, how many of us would trust a health organization that engaged in open social media that facilitated people in sharing their medical history online?

Some Best Practices

1. Collection – While getting lots of data is good, make sure you don’t collect a bunch of personal information you really have no use for. If you use third party applications, make sure there not of the type that misrepresents how much data they’re collecting.
2. Attain proper consent – The beginning of the data journey is collection. The key to collection is proper consent. Many jurisdictions have legislation that requires organizations to explain why data is being collected and what it will be used for, so make sure you don’t go around that.
3. Give customers a benefit – people will often freely give lots of information, just so long as you offer them some benefit for doing so.
4. Separate sensitive data – Some information is more sensitive than others. Obviously, data is much more likely to be a target for hackers if it is financial data. However, non-financial data can be just as devastating if there is a privacy breach. Some information about a person, once public, can never be made un-public. To mitigate this, marketers should separate the sensitive information from the open information. Marketers very often have no need for the sensitive information In other words, just let someone else host the site that processes payments.
5. Manage your employees – If customers have an expectation of privacy, role-based access models can restrict access to a need-to-know basis.
6. Know the law – There is a lot of law that can bite marketers including corporate law that requires public companies to report significant breaches, the Patriot Act, and even proposed law such as the Mobile Device Privacy Act.
7. Avoid excessive personalization – Don’t creep people out!

I’m not exactly lazy but I do like to conserve effort wherever possible. Okay, I’m a little bit lazy.

I have always been fascinated with the concept of bots such as those in homes, the military, Google cars, and online gaming.

In a recent article, Jeremiah Owyang of the Alimeter group described several growing categories of social media automation: Content Publishing on Timer, Social Content Optimization, and Virtual Agent Software.

Some seem to believe that much of this social media automation is basically borderline SEO manipulation, or becoming a value-add curator because one lacks the time to create content. Or create Twitter bots because one lacks the money to hire humans. (There are even Twitter bot competitions!).

Aggregating newsfeeds has been around for some time. Several very popular websites have started this way, such as the Drudge Report and Huffington Post, and have introduced competition for traditional newspapers in the process.

However, my searches of social media software or social media automation may simply be returning examples of existing software rebranded and revised to cash in on dazzling buzzwords. While some new monitoring software is undoubtedly innovative, some of it seems like rehashing of fairly long-standing software and web crawling functionality.

As you would expect, not all uses of automation have worked out in all cases. This Hubspot article describes a fairly funny example of over-using Twitter. In a follow up article, Hubspot lists the following 11 Social Media Automation Mistakes to Avoid Like the Plague. IMO, these seem just like manifestations of typical marketing mistakes.

1. You’re Scared of It
2. You’re Using Way Too Much of It
3. You Leave No Room for Ad Hoc Updates
4. You’re Setting it and Forgetting It
5. You’re Hiring an Agency to Manage It and Not Properly Setting Expectations
6. Your Scheduled Updates Even SOUND Robotic
7. Your Content Is Stale or Unremarkable
8. Your Timing Is Way Off
9. You Treat Scheduled Updates the Same Way on All Social Networks
10. You’re Not Measuring Results and Adjusting Accordingly
11. You’re Not Adding Sharing Links to Your Content

What do you think?

Consumers cannot purchase your products if they don’t know they exist. This is a key issue for any marketer including my class project client, the Toronto Rock. It’s an even more concerning issue for the abandoned entrepreneurial ideas I’ve ever flirted with, since far more new businesses fail due to lack of demand than because of poor delivery. I will focus on one component of awareness: website traffic.

According to Shar VanBoskirk of Forrester in How Consumers Find Websites in 2011, natural search results, links, and personal emails are the most cited resources for finding websites. Email blasting and offline advertising are falling in effectiveness. Conversely, all forms of personal recommendation are increasing in effectiveness including social media sites increases, as they overtaking other forms of communication.

This seems consistent with the context explained by Seth Godin to justify the approach of permission marketing. As consumers get more mature and skillful at dodging traditional interruption marketing, the only remaining way to get consumers’ attention is through channels that we have allowed into our lives. Instead of spam, Marketers should use opt-in email newsletters, or at least be a lot better with their spam.

These trendlines have impacts on the products as well. Seth Godin links the decline of interruption marketing to the end of the TV-industrial complex, and thus to the decline of average products for average people. Marketers should develop niche products supported by a core group of product enthusiasts, which is similar to the premise of The Long Tail, however Godin throws in the added necessity to develop products that are worth people talking about. So the recommendation is actually to develop remarkable products worthy of dinner party conversation. It’s simple really: just develop remarkable products capable of going viral. No problem.

The age of consumers and their technology preferences have significant impact on how people find websites. Marketers should use communication methods appropriate for their demographic. While all age cohorts use search, younger demographics are far more likely to be influenced by Twitter and blogs. While this may change as the technographic profile of age cohorts evolve, the long and short seems to be to use a variety of technologies to cover all necessary bases.

What do you think?

I recently reviewed Larry Weber’s Marketing to the Social Web. It’s a bit unfair for me to harshly criticize a book that is now five years old, which is ancient history in terms of social media technology. So while the book is highly cited, the content seems somewhat obvious and not highly controversial. However, I will do it anyways.

Social and internet media are changing how our minds work. We now have the ability to avoid commercials and increasingly understand the mechanisms of targeted micro-niche advertising. The old techniques and playbooks of advertising are not working so well. In addition, consumers have access to far more information than they did previously to validate the claims of marketers as well as a greater ability to communicate their problems.

Online communication has allowed a shift from one-directional carpet bombing to a two-way conversation (if done properly), and marketers must seize this opportunity. Marketers should understand these new technologies and phenomena in order to capitalize on these trends. In particular, Marketers should establish, leverage, and listen to social communities in order to proactively guide how their brands and companies are being defined.

There are several key components to building a customer community:

1. Observe and Evaluate – Observe what the web is saying about your company. Not just the official channels but also the authentic comments from individuals. Compare websites and find best practices. This includes measuring activity.
2. Enlist and provide community benefits – Find key members of target communities and find ways to facilitate them to have the influence they desire.
3. Promote and ignite your communities – Find ways to provide an information source to instigate discussion and get people talking.

As one might expect, this book discusses many of the same concepts and themes as other seminal works. The various ways offered to enlist community members are very similar to the technographic segmentation model offered in Groundswell: Each segment needs to be considered and facilitated in their preferred methods of interaction. While both books share the view that online marketing is now a necessity, Groundswell does a more interesting job of ensuring that strategic objectives are incorporated in marketing strategy, reducing the chances that marketers will become excessively enchanted with a technology at the expense of customer relationships. My interpretation is that Marketing to the Social Web seems to imply that the activities of web marketing align with the marketing funnel which in turn aligns with a consumer decision-making process that all consumers go through. In contrast, Groundswells says that users have fundamentally different usage and interaction patterns, and companies should focus on that.

 

Adding to the mix, the Mckinsey approach materials seem to agree with Marketing to the Social Web in harkening back to the traditional focus on the consumer decision-making process.

In evaluating all these sources, marketers must incorporate and integrate these sometimes conflicting models. Groundswell’s POST method is clearly an excellent high-level framework to organize a marketing strategy. The technographic segmentation is most useful in the analysis phase when a marketer is determining who its overall customers are. Once a marketer has considered in detail who its customers are, marketers should then break down customer behaviour step by step, utilizing the concepts from Mckinsey and Weber.

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