What can digital marketers learn from start-ups?

Start-up ventures embrace uncertainty and put the customer first – two skills that digital marketers would do well to mirror.

Digital marketing teams and start-ups have more in common than one might think. Both (usually) are understaffed, both need to wear several professional hats at the same time, and both fight an uphill battle to sell ideas to their stakeholders.

Yet, despite their similarities, there are fundamental differences in the way the two operate and how they go to market.

Here are two lessons digital in-house teams and agencies can learn from start-up entrepreneurs.

1. Become comfortable with uncertainty

If the last decade is any indicator of what the future holds for the marketing and advertising industry, the only thing certain is uncertainty.

We are still witnessing rapid and constant transformation – new platforms, new consumer behaviors, new business models, and there is no sign of things slowing down any time soon.

While it is in the very nature of start-ups to face and deal with extreme uncertainties and changes, larger corporations and businesses often fall into the perfectionist trap.

Perfection can of course be something good, but for many companies, as the old saying goes: ‘Perfect is the enemy of the good’.

This is certainly the case for agencies, which can spend too much time refining their products, campaigns and initiatives and testing them in artificial environments, rather than assessing and evolving them directly in market.

Being comfortable with uncertainty also means keeping up with fast changing consumer trends – and being ready to act on them. If you’re not moving fast enough today, you might be irrelevant by tomorrow.

For many large companies this would require a major cultural shift from traditional hierarchies, departmental silos and approval processes towards more nimble structures that embrace failure as opportunity to learn and refine their focus.

It’s not impossible though – many big names have shown the way. Flickr for example started off as an online role-playing game, and PayPal was originally envisioned as a cryptographic firm.

These companies were only able to evolve after implementing and accepting a constant process of trial and error.

Now I’m not talking about drastically changing business models, but about changing the way we approach digital marketing.

Let’s not kill good ideas because they aren’t perfect. Let’s instead take our minimum viable product to market and use real-time feedback to make it better, or in some cases, make its best performing elements work harder.

PepsiCo’s Doritos Mariachi case is already a few years old now, but still serves as a good example for, amongst others, real-time content evaluation.

Doritos developed a framework to monitor the effectiveness of every piece of social content they put out into the world, which in turn helped them to ensure high-performing content was pushed harder through all social media channels.

2. Get up close with your customers

Many big companies claim that their approach to marketing, and to business in general, is customer-centric. This usually manifests itself in terabytes of big data, numerous focus group reports, various survey study analyses, and dozens of social media dashboards.

All this data is of course very helpful for developing insights that lead to effective marketing campaigns. Being an analytical and digitally centric strategist myself, I greatly support these methodologies and think we should continue to practice them.

An undesirable byproduct of so much data at our disposal, however, is that we run the risk at looking at customers as numbers rather than human beings whose lives we want to add value to.

Start-ups usually don’t get the luxury of having research and insights teams help them navigate the consumer landscape. Instead they have to learn about their customers’ problems, concerns, and motivations firsthand by observing, and simply talking to them.

A direct conversation with your customers can quite often reveal useful insights that otherwise might get lost in the sheer volume of data provided by other research methods.

But more importantly, talking face-to-face to consumers can make you seem more empathetic towards their needs and concerns. In the long run this brings you one step closer to seeing the world through your customers’ eyes. And in my book, that’s an essential skill for running a customer-centric business.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to culture. In order to stay relevant to people’s ever-changing lifestyles, bigger companies need to adopt a more fluid and nimble way of developing ideas and bringing them to life.

Big business is recognizing the need to stay relevant and innovative by aligning with start-ups.

In Asia, insurance brand AIA sponsors an accelerator course for start-ups in Hong Kong, in part to help foster ‘change’ within the organisation.

For the digital marketing industry – which by its very nature is the most entrepreneurial form of marketing – it’s essential to allow digital marketers to be at the cutting edge of this transformation.

Allow them to dream big, experiment, and also to fail. Failure is an important part of the learning process, and a key step towards change.

What else can digital marketers learn from startups? Feel free to leave your comments below.

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Top 25 Social Media Marketing Tips from the Experts

Social media has increasingly become the significant driving force in marketing.  So, how does the average company or brand make the most effective use of this very important tool?

Here are 25 things that experts can implement to maximize the effectiveness of their social media campaigns.

1. Post regularly – The more your audience hears from you, the more trust you’ll be able to build.

2. Deliver relevant content –  ensure that what your audience hears (and sees) is interesting and fits seamlessly with your brand identity.

3. Post unique content – Try not to curate too much of your social media content, as most likely your target audience has seen it before. If you want to stand out on social media, your content needs to be unique to your brand.

4. Share and retweet – a great way to widen your audience and show that you know what’s relevant.

5. Don’t discount the “smaller” social networks – Test out everything, which includes Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, etc. You might be surprised at the results!

6. Be as visible as possible – Don’t be afraid to follow some of your competitors, and even interact with their content.

7. Be a helper – Respond on Twitter or Facebook when you have legitimate answers to questions, and never follow up with calls to action or sales language. Be genuine about wanting to help.

8. Vary the appearance of your logo – Experiment with different colors and layouts that clearly communicate who you are. This presents a good opportunity to split test which posts get the best engagement.

9. Learn from your mistakes – Analyze past posts to determine what works consistently and what doesn’t.  Refrain from posting content that fails to get significant engagement.

10. Always use images on Twitter –  Use images to your advantage, as they get better engagement than tweets that only has text.

11. Limit tweets to 100 characters – this provides extra characters for people to share your tweets with comments or @tags.

12. Stop fishing for likes and shares – Try engaging your audience in ways that encourage conversations and interactions. If people find what you post interesting, they will share.

13. Mix it up with content formats – Make sure that your social media posts (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) are well-branded, and don’t be afraid to use different formats.

14. Host live hangouts – This makes the social media experience more real. Both Google Hangouts and live Twitter events are great tools to use.

15. Make strategic use of #hashtags in all relevant social media platforms –  whatever you do, please don’t make up hashtags as you write your posts. Thoroughly research trending hashtags. There will be times when you can blaze your own trail, but if you want to broaden your reach, you need to follow existing trends.

16. Get good at one thing at a time –  try not to establish several different social media channels and attempt to keep up with them all. It’s a good way to burn out fast. Master one social media platform, and then move on to the next.

17. Automate whatever you can – Always maintain a fresh flow of content. Don’t be afraid to use automation tools to schedule your posts and keep your content organized.

18. Know what your competitors are posting – Look for patterns in your competitors’ content, and test out similar material of your own.

19. Spend money on video – Every niche can benefit from videos as they get better engagement on social media.

20. Hold contests and giveaways – Few things churn up the kind of buzz that’s created by giving away free stuff, so consider some friendly competition among your followers.

21. Use your email list to promote your social media content –  it’s a great way to drive targeted traffic!

22. Invest in custom graphics – Stock photos work, however, images unique to your brand almost always gets more engagement.

23. Encourage employee engagement on your channels – The people who work for you are among your best endorsers. Enlist their help in sharing your content on their personal channels.

24. Be an authority – Position yourself as a leader in your niche, and post content that proves it.

25. Take risks – Try something outlandish once in a while, and don’t be afraid to stretch people’s perception of your brand.

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11 Unbreakable Laws Of Social Media Marketing

We all know how it is, you get your hands on a social media position, or you start to run some serious social media for your business, and pretty soon it’s all going very wrong. You don’t know what you’re doing, and you’re making mistakes all over the place.

You need direction. You need some rules.

In this post, we look at the eleven unbreakable laws of social media. They are unbreakable because if you break them, well, some bad things happen. At the very least you may be looking at a wasteland on social media. At worst, you could be looking at a brand that is disliked.

Law One: Think before you post

Sounds like common sense? Well, it is. But you’d be surprised how many companies send out content on social media without considering the impact first of all. Whether it’s making an unfortunate comment about a competitor or losing your rag and going full on rage in a tweet, you need to always consider the impact of what you post.

Take a second just before you press ‘send’ or post’ every time. Read it through. Is it conveying the right message about your brand? Is it truthful? Is it going to hurt anyone?

Those are three pretty good test questions, we think.

Here’s more advice on things to do before you post a new piece of content.

Law Two: Always remember that real people are involved

This is a crucial one because it pretty much defines everything you do on social media. Remember that it is called social media and this all makes sense.

Every time you do anything on social media, remember that there are people involved somewhere. We talked about the impact in the first law. This law is about ensuring that you work hard to build and maintain relationships.

This means your branding has to be front of mind. If you are directly interacting with or at least broadcasting to customers and prospects, everything you do is part of the relationship building process. How are you acknowledging this in the way you write, post and share?

We’re not just talking about companies insulting their audience, that’s too easy. We’re also talking about how you build up a base of loyal people who actively look for your latest update. When you’ve achieved that, you’re starting to build relationships.

The upshot here? Make every post and update count towards the relationship you are trying to build.

Law Three: Listen and then listen some more

No company gets anywhere on social media unless it listens to what is being said online. Listen to what people are saying about you and act accordingly, obviously, but take that listening one step further and focus on what is being said about your industry.

The more you listen to industry news and opinion the more informed you will be.

It makes you a more professional outfit. When you’re selling, you can confidently say you know what is happening in your industry. It’s pretty safe to say not all of your competitors do this

Law Four: Be in the right place

This is important. Find out which channels your audience is on and don’t veer off the path.

Don’t be on Pinterest if you don’t sell to women. And don’t even go near Snapchat unless your demographic is under 18 (and pretty cool with it).

Be on the right channel so your efforts are not wasted. By not being on the right channel, you’re not just breaking one of our laws, you’re leaving yourself open to saturation and dilution.

Here’s our guide on choosing the right social media platform for your business.

Law Five: Don’t follow people you shouldn’t

We’re not talking creepy stuff here. We’re just acknowledging that it is easy to connect with people who have absolutely nothing to do with your industry or niche because it means you simply get more followers, right?

But when you’re trying to market to the audience (and possibly spending money doing so) you’re potentially wasting time and resources. And when you get an embarrassing tweet in your stream from someone who has nothing to do with your true audience, it just looks bad.

Keep it relevant. Keep it targeted. You might get less followers but your followership will be of a higher quality and you will see the results in a higher engagement rate.

Law Six: Create great content

This is something that is incredibly hard to do unless you have a solid plan. Creating great content means ensuring that the post you put out there has some thought behind it and taps into what your audience wants to see.

Create exciting, visual content by all means, and share it too. But the moment you do anything mediocre, people will start to wonder why you are at the party.

If necessary, post less frequently. In our study on posting frequency we’ve seen that posting less frequently can give a boost to the organic reach of your posts.

Just ensure you have quality at the heart of everything you do.

Law Seven: Be active

The most successful companies in social media share a lot. They know that people want to see good content, but the also know that every time someone shares their content, it helps spread it even further. Getting the word out means that your marketing is working. The more you share the better.

Share the relevant and quality content that you find, because that is just good manners. But also, now and then, share a blog post you wrote or an infographic you have designed. It all works out for the better because people will share it much further than you could imagine.

Identify when your audience is online. Optimise your posting schedule and publish new content on times of the day when majority of your audience is online. Here’s more advice on improving the engagement rate of your content.

Law Eight: Take it easy. Please

Head on over to Twitter now and chances are that you’ll find at least one person who is spamming you and/or creating an undying steam of worthless content that just keeps flashing up in front of your eyes. These people are annoying and they don’t understand rule number eight.

Social media takes time. Take it easy and stop updating like a maniac. Build relationships, but only do so when it looks like the other person would like to talk to you. This will mark you out as someone special in the horde, and will allow you to build ethical relationships in future.

Take your time, observe everyone’s behaviour, and then introduce yourself.

Law Nine: Interact and respond

If someone reaches out to you, and they don’t appear to be anything like scary or weird, then respond. It’s important that there is that reciprocity.

Check them out, if they look like someone you need to know, start a real conversation with them. Businesses have been built using this law.

Most companies ignore the messages they get and that is a social media failure.

Law Ten: Listen to the influencers

ILook for people in your industry who are influencers, disruptive people who are changing the way people think about what you do. Then listen to what they’re saying on social media. Take note, and follow their conversations. They know what they are talking about.

When you finally really get to know their flow and style, and subject matter on social, reach out. You may be surprised at what happens when an influencer enjoys your product so much so he or she shares it with their large and loyal audience.

Law Eleven (bonus law): Be consistent

One of the biggest reasons why people stop following others or start ignoring them at least on social is the ‘burst’ effect. This is where a business comes up with hundreds of tweets and posts and spends a few days sending them out there. After that the company goes quiet and ignores their own social media profiles.

When a business loses sight of Law Eight (check back in this post if you have to) and disappears, it looks really, really bad. Remember the last time you found out that a business just didn’t do what it said it would? Not good, right? Are you still doing business with them? We didn’t think so.

So there are ten (plus one) unbreakable laws of social media. Integrate this new understanding into your working life and you’ll soon start to see a return on your social media investment

Above all, let common sense prevail. A lot of what is outlined above in this post is just good old intelligent thinking.

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The Business Case for Social Selling [Infographic]

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This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Sales Blog. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.

If you haven't started incorporating social media into your sales process, you're not alone.According to a survey from PeopleLinx, only 31% of sellers currently use social to sell.

But a quick look at the data backing social selling indicates that the trend will only get stronger in the years to come. For instance, 79% of salespeople who actively engage on social media outperform their peers, and over half of buyers consult social channels as part of their research processes -- up from 19% in 2012.

While there's no shame in not being a social seller today, salespeople who refuse to join the party will get left behind in the near future. Need some convincing? Check out the data in the following infographic from Sales For Life. Better to join the ranks of social sellers late than never.

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7 Basic Social-Media Tips to Set Your Marketing Right

When it comes to marketing your brand online, if you’re not on social media -- and doing it right -- you’re missing a huge opportunity. That said, busy entrepreneurs and other professionals often have a difficult time navigating the quickly growing world of social media.

Fortunately, we’re here to your rescue. Here are some helpful tips to get you off on the right foot.

1. Know thy social platform.

Just as there are recipes for favorite foods, there are formulas for effective posts, tweets and #latergrams -- depending on the social site. Having the right mix of pictures, questions or quotes can make the difference between a post going viral or going into the void.

2. Be yourself.

Business is, ultimately, all about connections -- and not just the professional networking kind. If you want your message to resonate with customers, give them something relatable and human to connect to. With everything being automated, it might not come so easily, but it’s well worth the effort.

3. Watch out for common mistakes.

Before you can capitalize on what’s going right, understand what you’re doing wrong. Thankfully, there’s a handy list of common mistakes for you to familiarize yourself with and avoid like the plague.

4. Use the tools of the trade.

Believe it or not (and why not, really?), there is technology out there to help you make the most of tools you’re already using. From Tweetdeck to PinAlert, there are tools to help you optimize each specific network. After all, what works for LinkedIn doesn’t work as well on Pintrest. These are the tools you need in your social media toolbelt.

5. Embrace new networks.

At the beginning, the next big thing is just some new thing that nobody’s paying much attention to. Myspace was king of social networks before some new site named The Facebook came on the scene, for example. There are benefits to being an early adopter of new networks, whether that’s Google+ or some other yet-unnamed platform, because you never know which one will take off. Get in on the ground floor of a new social network when you can.

6. Be open to change.

The New Year is almost upon us, and that means new strategies where social media is concerned. Sure, it’s different from what you’re comfortable with right now, but it might also be more effective.

7. Consider other avenues, too.

Social media is a great way to create awareness and customer outreach. Still, it is not the only way to put your business out there. An investor would tell you to diversify your portfolio. This is also accurate advice in regards to your marketing strategy.

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