Tami McCarthy's BuzzCloud

Archive for the ‘Great marketing’ category

Finally! PR Pros Own The Social Media Function

June 17th, 2010

When you are in the business of brand building, as I am, social media is a no-brainer. But, it’s taken some convincing to the rest of the world as to why. Until now.

I have always known based on my own experience as a PR professional that social media, and the related tasks of developing strategic content, messaging, building audience and connections for companies who engage the platform and utilize the tools available, is an organic extension from what we already do. It’s been slower or harder for some industries to not only embrace social media, but then try to figure out who should “own” social media within an organization. Not surprisingly to people like me, the latest research shows that social media will peak in 2012, but if you have been a slow poke, you might want to consider stepping up your game.

If you follow my blog, one of my first posts this year was intentionally designed to help motivate you to embrace social media. If you took my advice, bravo! This post will help see you made a great decision and took important steps to help anchor the success of your brand.

But, if you’re still dragging your feet, you have some catching up to do. Chances are, you might be like many marketers trying to gain a better understanding of who the best person is to handle your social media function, and that alone could be a big factor in holding you, or your business, back. One of the goals of my blog is to help marketers reach their business objectives by providing useful insights and information that drives their brand forward. In particular, I’m interested in helping to de-mystify what is going on in the communications space so that brands can develop a strong voice, make greater impact, and deeper connections with their audience. All evidence seems to point to PR being the best discipline to handle the social media for brands. I love being deeply entrenched in this process.

Having so-called “social media experts” can be limiting, as they really may not understand your business at all. That’s risky. As a PR professional, I make it my business to know every aspect of each client’s business and the industry within they each operate. By doing a deep dive at the beginning of our relationship, I have a fundamental understanding from which to build a solid marketing communications platform. This can be as simple as a traditional PR campaign or as broad as a total brand makeover complete with new identity, website, advertising/PR, social media program, and sales collateral. Clients benefit greatly by our getting to the core brand drivers of their business because we are then fully-equipped to help take them wherever they want to go. As a result, social media is a natural progression of everything we do. And happily, we are very adept at developing social media programs that are not only complementary to a client’s overall marketing efforts, but help turbo-charge them in many ways.

Need some more convincing on why PR is well-equipped to run the social media function, this post from Nancy Bistritz highlights this data:

What the Strategic Communication & Public Relations Center out of the University of Southern California found was:

Approximately 25 percent of companies put between 81-100 percent of budgetary control over social media in PR’s hands, compared to marketing, with only 12.6 percent getting the same level of control; and

Twenty-four percent of participants reported that PR/communications departments have 81-100 percent of strategic control of social media.

These findings were particularly interesting to me — especially when I look at all of the departments that have their hand in social media. So, what gives? According to the study, there are four factors contributing to PR now running the social media show:

1. PR tactics tend to be informational, rather than sales focused;

2. PR tactics tend to emphasize a dialogue versus a monologue;

3. PR tactics tend to embrace longer forms of communication; and

4. PR tactics are typically associated with lower costs.

It’s nice to see PR getting the recognition it deserves. One of the upsides of the downturn in the economy was that as companies cut and contained costs, many in the C-Suite realized that PR delivered high value at a cost efficient price to help sustain the viability of the brand’s bottom line. In some cases, the PR function remained as a company’s lifeline to the customer-facing world. Regardless, it’s also exciting to see that the path to communications success feels more accessible for many brands.

What about you? Where do you stand on the social media learning curve? What’s working and what’s holding you back? Is it reassuring to know that a PR pro can easily and effectively help you define and execute a social media strategy for your business? I’d love to hear from you, or if you found this post useful, please share it!

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Posted in Great marketing, The Latest Buzz

Tags: PR and Social Media PR trends social media stats who should handle social media

How I Increased Traffic to My Website and Blog by 198% in 6 months

June 7th, 2010

Data is a very validating thing. My husband, Dan McCarthy, who writes an established and well-regarded blog titled, ViralHousingFix.com, and is Chairman & CEO of Network Communications, Inc. the world’s leading provider of content and information on the housing market, recently walked me through how my website and blog were performing based on the content I was generating, and the social media marketing strategy I was implementing for my agency. He was generous to also write a case study on what we learned, and convincing enough to get me to let him publish it.

You too, can take these steps to build your digital footprint and only then will you see and experience the tangible results — increased traffic, new business leads, engaging dialogue with those in your own community of interest — the social web has to offer. Everything can be tracked and analyzed, so you will always know what’s working and what isn’t.

So, here’s the post.

If this post and case study are helpful to you, please feel free to share.

And here are the two key take-aways that got my attention:

Results:

Tami McCarthy’s BuzzCloud was launched in November 2009. Results for the subdomain buzzcloud.tmgpr.com were tracked separately from the results for the www.tmg-media.com domain so that the impact of the new content strategy could be accurately measured.

That impact was immediate.

In the six months following the launch of the blog, TMG increased web traffic to its TMGpr.com agency site and to its new blog, Buzzcloud, by 198%.

Hidden within this gain are a couple of data points that demonstrate the impact of a well-executed content marketing and social networking program.

Visits to TMGpr.com, the agency site, increased 32% in the six-month period following the blog launch;

Search engines drove 61% more traffic to the agency site in the six-month period;

The number of keywords that drove traffic to TMG’s agency site gained from 425 to 1,178 in the six-month period.

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Posted in Great marketing, Social How-To's, The BuzzCloud, The Latest Buzz

Tags: social media marketing social media measurement tactics tami mccarthy ViralHousingFix web analytics

Authenticity, For Real

January 5th, 2010

Three cheers for SPECIAL K, the 54-year-old cereal brand from Kellogg! Come on, who doesn’t know about the “Special K Challenge,” right? I bet at some point in your life, regardless if you’re a woman or man (although 65 percent of its consumers are women), you tried it. Now, just in time for the new year, here comes a refreshing twist that takes the concept to a whole new level. And it’s a good one. (Have you caught the new TV ads yet?)

Today’s advertising column in The New York Times, Pitching a Product, Without Showing It by Andrew Adam Newman reviews Special K’s latest advertising effort …which is an excellent example of a brand that knows who it is, understands its customers inside and out, and is embracing the new marketing normal: authenticity. As Newman points out, Special K unveiled a new ad campaign this week featuring 6 real women they found while doing consumer research describing fitness goals. The campaign, which even though is essentially about weight-loss, isn’t about the “end result” from dieting, but rather reveals the vision these real women have at the beginning…how do they want to see themselves? What are their challenges? What’s really important? In one woman’s case, she wants to show her young daughter “that mommy feels confident.”

Six different spots blanketed the airwaves during the national morning television news shows, and what makes the campaign, in my opinion, incredibly fresh and unique is that not once do you see a logo or product shot. Unlike Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, the Special K ads are not about featuring “idealized women.”

Leo Burnett, Chicago produced the commercials. And despite the rather predictable problem/solution set-up, the execution works incredibly well throughout.

Quoted in the NY Times piece, Jose Alberto Duenas, vice president for cereal marketing in the U.S. at Kellogg, said showing no Special K products or logo in the ads was unprecedented for the brand.

“We’re trying to be faithful to giving real women a place to declare victory without the piece feeling overwhelmed by what the brand brings to the table,” Mr. Duenas said. “If you want to make a connection, you have to give consumers a chance to take part of the spotlight. Authenticity is what we’re looking for.” Bravo.

There’s even a new website that goes more in-depth on the personal stories of these women, and features resources, tips and information designed to help women plan their own victory. What I like about this even more is that it’s an integrated effort, a mix of traditional spots on TV and an online component that’s interactive, and user-friendly. It’s meant to surround the consumer, yes, but in a softer way that isn’t all about “look how cool my brand is” and more about “we’re a brand that gets you, we’re a brand that puts you first.” The follow-through is flawless.

From a branding perspective, I love this campaign. It’s relatable, it’s inviting, it’s not slick. It’s not perfect. Even better, as the marketing world is all a-Twitter about social media and the role that “being authentic” plays, here is Kellogg taking it a step further. They get it, and they aren’t afraid to embrace it. Remember, this is a brand that’s been around for 54 years! They are doing all the necessary work to stay in touch with today’s consumers, and taking the steps –bold ones, even — to stay relevant in their lives. Special K, as a result, is more than just a cereal to the consumers who purchase it. It’s their “weight-loss partner” or their “self-confidence booster” — it’s the “healthy lifestyle” brand. As Newman’s article points out, they take a soft sell approach with incredible appeal, and thus, rejuvenated the brand to have real meaning. We can all learn from that. I wish Kellogg the best with their brave efforts. Looking at your business and marketing plan for 2010, are you taking bold steps or baby steps on the path to authenticity?

P.S. Can you take a guess as to what will be on my grocery list this weekend?

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Posted in Great marketing, The Latest Buzz

Tags: advertising authenticity branding cereal Dieting Kellogg brand marketing Special K

Branding Excellence

December 7th, 2009

With so much excitement in the news lately, and no end in sight to the number of women that have slept with Tiger Woods, I wanted to pause from that topic, and start the week off on an entirely new tangent. Clearly, we have seen what can happen when a brand can’t evolve or stay true to itself, or becomes misguided — whether its lack of vision, know-how, or scruples. But from time to time, I will share examples of brands that, in my opinion, capture it all: the look, the walk, the talk, the customer experience online and off.

This is one of them:

You might think I started off with an easy one: after all, beautiful girls and underwear. But, it takes marketing and branding excellence, not cleavage, to make a brand like Victoria’s Secret stand out as a mega-brand, for the long-haul. It’s fresh, feminine, and always on the cutting edge. Sure, at its core, it provides a good quality product at an affordable price. It’s not La Perla, an upscale luxury lingerie line, so it’s not trying at all to be something it is not. Victoria’s Secret is a mass market brand that promotes an all encompassing attitude, a lifestyle and standard of beauty most women aspire to. What are the key factors to its success? Every one of its touch-points delivers (or generally exceeds) on the customer expectation and experience. From ongoing traditional above-the-line advertising initiatives to support its storefronts and catalogs as well as drive online sales, to model search contests and prime-time TV specials (Did you catch the VS Fashion Show on CBS last week, with the Black Eyed Peas performing?) and community-building channels on the social web, it’s no secret that Victoria’s Secret knows its customers and how to deliver on its brand promise. It’s consistent regardless of how you come into contact with it. In fact, with its “all access” website, I’d say that the Victoria’s Secret brand takes customer engagement to the next level. (And it’s refreshing.)

Victoria’s Secret makes “sexy, feminine confidence” accessible, affordable, and fun.

Here’s a quick exercise. What is your brand’s promise? If you don’t know, now is a great time to figure it out. Boil it down to 2 or 3 words only. What you want is an overarching brand story that can translate into a marketing strategy and even better, helps to build a visual identity or campaign. If I say “sexy, feminine confidence” as I did with the Victoria’s Secret example, you can conjure up a whole set of images, colors, typefaces, phrases, channels, media, and more to help guide strategic thinking around development of a branding campaign or marketing platform.

Next step: Tune in; look at all the ways you engage your target audience. Are they consistent? What is your brand saying? Does your brand talk the talk, and walk the walk? Do you know how to engage your customers on the social web? How can you develop your brand to its full potential so that you’re delivering, evolving and engaging in critical ways that add to your bottom line? Take the time to know these answers now, and your brand will flourish for years to come.