Against the Grain: Drew Jones

Today’s fast-paced, give-it-to-me-now, speed-of-thought business climate pushes us to be both brilliant and fast. Speed wins and brilliant speed dominates. That’s certainly the case for marketing professionals. These times call for us to solve marketing problems faster than we ever have before. Often to the point of recognizing a problem, defining a strategy, executing on an idea and seeing the results all in a single day. Heck, in a single hour. It’s fly-by-the-seat-your-pants marketing at its very best. And its very worst.

That sort of business and marketing climate often leads us marketers — and we’re all guilty of it from time to time — to skip past vital steps in order to solve problems and get to market quicker. The most common mistake we see in this accelerated business culture is jumping straight to tactics and execution without considering strategy. It’s do first, think later, and it leads to misguided marketing and missed opportunities.

Here are the three steps we should all go through when working on any particular marketing problem. Nothing new, of course, but it’s amazing how often we spend little or no time on the first two steps.

1. Define the problem.
The most common mistake marketers make is trying to solve the wrong problem. They try to generate leads when what they really need is better sales support. Or they try to maintain their market share by finding new business when what they really need to do is increase customer retention. Define the real problem and you’re well on your way.

2. Determine a strategic approach.
There are usually a number of approaches to solving a marketing problem. Need more retail foot traffic? You could have a sale, redecorate the interior to make it more customer-friendly, move to a new location, change up your product mix, expand your advertising reach, etc.

3. Execute on the strategy.
Once you’re set on a strategy, it’s time to determine tactics and then set to executing your ad campaign, referral program, direct marketing blast or new Web portal.

Why is strategy so important? Take a moment to consider a scenario where you were forced to choose between a brilliant strategy executed in a lackluster way or a lackluster strategy executed beautifully. If you were forced to choose with your eyes, as most of us are prone to do, your initial reaction would be to choose the clever, creative, beautiful execution of a poor idea rather than the opposite. But a brilliant strategy with lackluster execution has at least some chance of moving the needle — you might only get 30% of what you’d get with great strategy and great execution, but an off-target strategy featuring award-winning writing and design won’t fare nearly as well. Great strategy will always win the day.

And you’ll actually solve the problem faster and more efficiently too. Speed wins.

It doesn't take a detective to notice that the media landscape is undergoing its biggest change since the advent of the Internet 15 years ago. The force of social media is forever altering the way individuals stay in touch and share ideas. And increasingly, this applies to companies as well.

By now we're all at least somewhat familiar with Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter and the rest of the social networking landscape (Plurk, anyone?). And although the conversation is certainly taking place in board rooms all across the country, most companies are hesitant to jump into this world. Knowing that, here are five things to consider before entering the pool.

Are you ready to make the commitment?
Social media is not a do-it-today-win-tomorrow strategy. Just like offline relationships, building and cultivating your online relationships takes time. The care and feeding of your friends and followers is a daily — nay, hourly — task that must garner its fair share of your attention and resources. Social media is a cumulative process that shows minimal returns at first and can grow exponentially over time. It's about giving and sharing your time, expertise and value, knowing that it'll come back to you ten-fold down the road.

Who's going to manage it?
Unlike an individual setting up a Facebook or Twitter account, your organization's presence on these social networks is representative of multiple individuals, departments and possibly even locations. But because of the personal and real-time nature of these tools, your social network presence is not something that can be managed on a corporate level. It must be turned over to a single person or small team entrusted to be a proactive member of the community and to make responsible decisions regarding corporate communication. And all this has to happen without an approval process for interactions and postings (they would slow things down to the point of making them irrelevant).

The manager of your social media presence should be a real individual with an identifiable voice, not a booming corporate entity. But at the same time, they must serve the company's interests, not their own. It's a delicate balance... but it's achievable.

For a great example, follow Scott Monty of Ford Motor Co. on Twitter.

Can you be open and transparent?
A hallmark of social networking is open, transparent communication. If you aren't a part of an organization that values and actively rewards these things, you may find it tough to engage effectively with your community via social networks. Unlike traditional one-way marketing efforts, this two-way (or two-thousand-way) conversation requires candid, honest, open and human conversation.

This does not, however, mean that you should undermine overarching corporate strategy. Before implementing a social media strategy, be sure to sit down with management and legal to set guidelines about what is permissible and how to handle sensitive inquiries.

Will you be all business all the time?
The personal nature of social networks all but insists that you be "real." Unfortunately for companies, "real" is a synonym for "not corporate." Like it or not, this means you'll likely get less-than-stellar results from an all-business-all-the-time approach. Have some fun, show your personality and don't be afraid to be real. Got some goofy pictures from the company holiday party? Post them. Have a funny travel story that happened on your most recent business trip? Share it. Doing these things will ensure that when you do have a business-first announcement to make that your community actually takes notice.

But looked at a different way, this is an opportunity. It's an opportunity to engage your customers and prospects on a personal level and build a truly personal relationship with them.

How will you measure success?
Much like the offline relationships that social networks mirror, there's no hard and fast way to measure success. Like a lot of things in life, it's sort of fuzzy... it's an I-know-it-when-I-see-it sort of thing. Knowing that, if you're looking to tie your social media strategy directly to dollars, you're probably barking up the wrong tree.

However, because of the online nature of social networks, there are a number of metrics you can watch to gauge success — and most sites provide tools to help you do just that. Beyond measuring the growth of your various social circles (friends, followers, etc.), you can also look at interactions, private messages and posts that mention you or your company. In addition, your communications and profiles should push Web traffic to your main site, which can be tracked through your regular Web analytics package.

One last thing to think about while you're standing on the edge, considering whether you should get in the water. Don't dip a toe... dive in. Much like the offline social world, online social media doesn't reward timidity.