Top 5: You Are What You Publish

Chapter 10: You Are What You Publish: Building You Marketing and PR Plan

Remember the first week when I kind of laid into Scott? I remember being so frustrated that he could just write a book about his ideas, state them as facts, and call everything a "new rule." For several chapters, I was nice to Scott. I thought he had some merit in what he was trying to articulate. This week, I found more agitation in the words of Scott, and feel like sharing his main points, and perhaps a little more. May I add some fuel to the fire?

Identify Your Organization's Goals

Scott makes a good point here. We need to understand our organization's goals to do anything. It, however, is not a new concept. Typically, marketing professionals wouldn't do too much of anything without a particular and clearly articulated goal in place. An organization's goal for social media might be increase leads, awareness, visibility, or to help generate or maintain a positive image. (An aside: classic pyschology literature suggests that people do everything in the pursuit of fullfilling some need or goal. Like eating - the goal is to diminish the feeling of hunger. An organization functions the same way though the usual goal is to increase profits. There are many ways to increase profits and increasing leads, awareness, visibility, etc. are only some examples of accomplishing that goal.)

Identify Your Target Market (Build Personas)

Scott makes a disturbing statement in which he claims the 4P's (product, place, price, promotion) of marketing are "nonsense." He goes on to say that the organizational goals and consumers should come first. If Scott were familiar with the foundation of the 4P's, and how to work through each step (and the steps even before those) he would know that the 4P's are not even a THOUGHT before the organization has a goal and the target market has been identified. For instance, a new product is not going to be developed without reason - there is a goal in mind, and typically there is a target market already identified while the product development is still a concept. The marketing campaign is developed around the 4P's - not the business. (But, yes - identifying that target market is important - do it.). Take a look at the example below that come from NetMBA - what's in the middle? The 4P's DO account for the target market...

Identify The Target's Goals

This is legitimate and often overlooked. Just as the organization has a goal, so do the consumers. Some of the research I am doing now is specifically related to identifying the goals, motivations, and core values of hunters for a DNRE advertising campaign. Using the means-end chain, we can identify the goals and essentially the "hook" for an advertising message. When you are not speaking to the consumers needs, wants, or desires, they are not listening. There are a couple of reasons that this is often overlooked: 1) because it is very expensive, and 2) results are not generalizable because it is qualitative data that is being collected. Nice to have, but should be determined in product/service development.

Speak In The Words of the Buyer

I like this one too, actually. In previous weeks we have discussed finding the words that people use for effective SEO. Keeping that in mind, this really isn't much different. Something that Scott doesn't discuss (but on the same topic) is the disconnect between the organization and the consumer if different language is used. If the consumer's image of the company becomes differently positioned because of the wording used by the organization chooses to use in marketing, there is a potential to lose consumers (or potential ones).

Articulate What You Want People To Believe

Well, I don't know about this (I'll explain in a moment), but I'll roll with it for now. Scott uses the example of President Obama's election campaign. Ok, I get it, Obama was known for bringing "change." The way Scott has this phrased, however, is that we will only say what people want to hear so they will buy what we're selling. To some degree it's true. BUT, we have to cautious... that kind of talk can also get us into a lot of trouble when we can't deliver. Perhaps Scott could ask 300 more people (in one room - together - it's not a research method, but okay) what Obama is known for now? Would they still say "change?" Because there was so much anticipation for change that (debatably) has not come, his image could be tarnished (based on the 3 people I asked in the library - at one time).