It was a fun, short interview about the issues that the restaurant faced when I jumped in as a partner to help my best friend. We discuss some of the specific actions that we took and how that helped lead us to becoming the #1 steakhouse in the Pioneer Valley.

If you can’t see the video, you can watch it over on PepsiCo’s YouTube channel.

If we managed to peak your interest and you wanted to read more about what we’ve down as a small business to build our community and increase sales at the restaurant using social media, you can find more here and here.

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We were interested by some of the data including the prediction that social media will drive more business value than SEO by 2013 and that over the next 3 years Google and Facebook will decline in importance while something new (and currently unknown) will emerge as the most important website or service.

Want to see what else these experts had to say? Here is the complete ebook as a presentation. If you want your own copy, you can download it.

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Recently Mike Volpe, VP of Marketing at HubSpot spoke at Atlassian Starter Day in San Francisco about startup marketing.  Mike used his experiences over the past 3 years of spearheading marketing for HubSpot while it grew from 5 to 160 employees and from a few customers to over 3,000.

I think you’ll find this presentation really useful as it has all sorts of actionable nuggets hiding inside of it. I know I took down a few notes and already shot off a couple of ideas to my team at New Marketing Labs. I would encourage you to sit back, relax, and hit play because I think you’ll do the same thing.

In case you missed it during the presentation, Mike broke down the ABCs of startup marketing into the following:

-Avoid Addiction
-Blog Beforehand
-Create Convenience
-Data Drives Decision
-Employ the Exceptional

You can read a short description of each of these over on the OnStartups blog.

If you don’t already know Mike, you should get to know him. As any good marketer would be, Mike can be found all over the web on his personal blog, the HubSpot blog, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, just to name a few. He’s works for an awesome company and is a good friend of mine that I think you would enjoy following.

Were there any letters in the alphabet that you think Mike was missing? List them in the comments below along with a short description.

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Marketing has changed dramatically since the adoption of social media.  How consumers digest advertising and make buying decisions has forever been altered by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and LinkedIn.

I lead the Demand Generation team at my organization.  However, the teams name, as well as my title, only tell a small fraction of the story.  Demand, or the creation of it, can be broken down into three distinct, yet dependent parts:

Demand Generation

Commonly referred to as Awareness, encompasses traditional media such as Television, Radio, Print, Billboards, and so on.  These are the bullhorns of advertising.  In many cases this is a customer’s first interaction with a brand; consciously or subconsciously.  I read a lot of nonsense in pop media that suggests traditional advertising is dead.  I believe what is dead is the asynchronous nature of advertising.  It is evolving to become bidirectional.  We have social media and the broader social web to thank for the phenomenon.  Considering that the business models of Facebook and Twitter are predominantly ad based, we better hope that advertising isn’t dead.

While many people think they are immune to advertising, it’s simply not the case.  Many companies use traditional media to imprint or introduce a brand to the target market.  The introduction does not mean there is an expectation (in most cases), to buy now!  The advertising is designed to elicit an emotional response in terms of awareness or association with the product or service.  I’m speaking in generalities because there are many different approaches and theories, such as Direct Response marketing, Branded Response, Content Marketing, Branding, etc.  One of the primary objectives of Demand Generation is to have the prospect take their brand impression and move it onto web.  This is the first step toward Demand Discovery.

Demand Discovery

In this phase, an interested consumer would use the web to inquire about the product.  Such as going onto Twitter to ask about peoples experience with the brand, or engaging with the brand directly and asking questions.  They may look on Facebook or LinkedIn for more content and recommendations, or they may search on YouTube for a product demo.  They will also use the social web to seek out brand alternatives to evaluate what type of service or product best fits their needs.  During this phase customers seek out what is commonly referred to as word-of-mouth.  They are asking their friends both online and offline, about what they use and what they prefer.  During the Discovery phase the brand lets go of the conversation and hands it to the community.  Not literally, but figuratively.

This is the true test of the brands health.  If the product and the value proposition don’t delivery, you’re toast.  The brand can’t use the social web to suddenly make an inferior product sound superior.  This is also where happy customers along with not so happy customers do the marketing on behalf of the brand.  They will influence the buying decision more than any form of traditional media.

Let’s use the iPod as an example.  Everyone remembers the TV ad featuring the dancer with white ear phones playing Are You Gonna be My Girl!.  The ad could have promoted speed and ease of use, but it didn’t.  It turned a stale functional music player into a fashion brand.  In turn, it created an impression that this was more than a music player, it was a must have fashion accessory if you want to be one of the cool kids.  Their legions of fans carried the message from that point forward.  This leads to the final phase, which is Demand Capture.

Demand Capture

This is the sale.  Demand Capture, in my view, happens in one of two areas; search (Google, Bing, etc.), and direct traffic to the brand’s web site or retail store.  Frequently a prospective customer will use a search engine to navigate the web.  During this process they will be exposed to a brand via paid advertising (pay-per-click) or they will find the brand in the natural/organic rankings which leads to the web site.  The primary distinction between Discovery versus Capture, is the transaction.  The Demand is effectively captured by a search landing page and/or directly by the website.  The website can also be substituted or in conjunction with a retail outlet.

Admittedly, there is more than a little commingling between Demand Generation, Discovery and Capture.  The Demand sandwich, for lack of a better visual, now has a tasty slice of Discovery sitting in the middle.  The sandwich was bland and predictable, kind of link bologna.  Now it’s full of flavor and stacked high with choices.  I’ll take rich flavor over bland any day.  As a marketer and a consumer, I prefer choice.  I love the transfer of power and the infinite choices a customer has to aid in their buying decision.  This makes for an informed customer.

An informed customer has a higher lifetime value and is likely to become an advocate of the brand on the social web.  Another benefit is transparency.  The brand promise is clear, thus discouraging detractors or those that are not right for the product or service.  If you can prevent detractors from purchasing your product in the first place, better for them, better for your brand.

Marketing’s success does not hinge on traditional media.  The price of entry is a stellar product and an amazing customer experience.  If you have a small budget and a big dream, spend all your waking hours making it a reality.  Talk about your progress, what your creating, create a community of believers.  Those believers will turn into customers, customers become fans, fans become your marketing engine.

This is my view.  What’s yours?

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Towards the end of the day I ended up running into the property manager and inquired as to what he suspected happened and whether or not there had been other problems reported on the property.  He told that me that it appeared to be targeted to the main vehicle because it had expensive tires and rims.  I was surprised that my wife or I hadn’t woken up during the night when the vehicle’s alarm, presumably, went off while the car was being jacked up and the tires were being stolen.  The property manager explained that the resident reported hearing his alarm go off but had just silenced it from his apartment figuring that it had been accidentally tripped by weather or an animal.  Had he actually looked to see why the alarm was going off, it is possible that he could’ve interrupted the crime.

Besides ensuring that there was nothing left in my vehicles that could attract criminals, I began thinking about how oblivious we are to car alarms nowadays.  We have become so accustomed to hearing alarms buzzing that many times we won’t even glance in the direction of the alarm while walking through a parking lot.  Have you ever done that?  I know I sure have.  Now, related that to your marketing program.  Are you ignoring the alarms going off all around you?  Do you even realize that alarms may be sounding crying for your attention?

Identifying the Alarms

Being able to identify the alarm and knowing what you need to be listening for is the first step.  What types of alarms should you be aware of?  They can come in a variety of formats but some of them may include:

• Declining responses to a marketing campaign
• An increase in spam complaints
• Continued lack of engagement from your community
• A decline in RSS or email subscribers to your blog
• A lack of growth in followers, fans, or subscribers

These are just a few of the many alarms that could be sounding that you continue to hit the silence button on.  Your alarms may be different than those that I have listed.  Exactly what the alarms are really doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you identify them so that you can properly respond to them before it’s too late.

Responding to the Alarms

So, you’ve identified the alarm, now what?  You should develop both a strategic and tactical plan to address the issue and respond to it.  The level of the response will be dictated on what the alarm actually is and based on how long you might’ve ignored it.  Much like a progressive disease, the longer it goes untreated, the harder it may be to correct.  What are some ways you can respond to the alarm(s)?

• Switch up the day and time you send your email marketing
• Review your site analytics over a period of time. Identify where the decline began or where it started to level off.  What were you doing (or not doing) during that time?
• Did you recently update your blog and forget to add the “Subscribe” button back?  Yep, I’ve done that before.
• Have you ever analyzed what type of content you produce?  Is it one-way push? Are you promoting others? Do you only retweet others work?

What’s Next

The next steps are to continue monitoring the changes you have implemented and track whether or not they’ve been successful.  Always monitor, evaluate, experiment and adapt.  This will ensure that you’re staying alerted to alarms before it becomes too late.  Much like the resident who lost all four of their tires, when you realize that you shouldn’t have hit the silence button, it may be too late.  Worse case scenario is that you’re so blind to the alarms that you slowly bleed your entire community or customers and have nothing left.  Just a hint: try to avoid that from happening.  It’s usually not healthy for your business.

Do you silence the alarms going on around you?

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Photo Credit: wallyg

Want to know what some of my predictions are for 2010?  You’re going to have to read the eBook to find out!

Online Marketing Predictions for 2010

The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory

Want some more explanation?  David Plouffe was the campaign manager and chief architect of the Obama presidential campaign.  Over the course of 2 years the campaign raised more than $750 million, had a staff of almost 6,000 people and an army of volunteers that totaled into the millions.  The Audacity to Win (Amazon affiliate link) takes you closer than any other account of the Obama campaign has.  There are many business, marketing, community development and time management takeaways in addition to the granular level detail of what it takes to run a presidential campaign.

As usual, I shot a quick video with my thoughts on the book.  If you can’t view the video, check it out over on my YouTube channel.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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That is exactly what J.C. Hutchins is doing.  J.C. Hutchins is the author of 7th Son: Descent (Amazon link) and has decided to release the first 10 chapters of the book, available as a PDF, today.  His hope?  Well, it’s two part.  First, as an increasing number of books are released each year, authors are having to come up with different and creative ways to promote.  J.C. definitely accomplishes that with this promotion.  Secondly, he hopes that he hooks you so much after reading the first 10 chapters that you’ll cough up the few dollars to buy the book and read the rest of it.

Want to know what the books is about?  Check out this description taken from J.C.’s site:

As America reels from the bizarre presidential assassination committed by a child, seven men are abducted from their normal lives and delivered to a secret government facility. Each man has his own career, his own specialty. All are identical in appearance. The seven strangers were not born, but grown — unwitting human clones — as part of a project called 7th Son.

The government now wants something from these “John Michael Smiths.” They share the flesh as well as the implanted memories of the psychopath responsible for the president’s murder. The killer has bigger plans, and only these seven have the unique qualifications to track and stop him. But when their progenitor makes the battle personal, it becomes clear John Alpha may know the seven better than they know themselves…

Once I read that, I was hooked.  I love government thrillers so I started getting excited as I read the above description.  I’m in the middle of reading the PDF now and I already know that I’ll be buying a copy of the book.  The book is definitely getting some rave reviews.  How about you?  Want to check out the first handful of chapters for free and decide for yourself?

To download the first 10 chapters for J.C. Hutchins new book 7th Son: Descent, you can find download the PDF.

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Outside of this conversation I had been bugging Chris to analyze my restaurant, Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse, for some time now.  Other case studies have focused on what we’ve done but not tearing apart the metrics.  Chris is a genuis at analysis and analytics.  So, I really wanted him to expand my knowledge and ability Google Analytics and other tools to properly analyze our efforts at the steakhouse and determine our ROI.  For those that don’t know, approximately 1.5 years ago we cut out 80% of our traditional marketing budget and turned our focus to our website, SEO, social media and other digital initiatives as a way to drive sales.  Surprise, surprise, it worked.  Since then we have seen a minimum of 20% increase in sales when comparing the same month the previous year.  But, one thing we never did was break out and track those individual efforts between the website, social media, and other areas we were spending our time online.

As part of his presentation Chris asked if he could use the restaurant as an example and do an analysis of our ROI.  What Chris found, in terms of hard dollars, surprised me and I think it will surprise you too.

You can check out Chris’ presentation, both slides and videos below:

Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

Slides

As I said, I was surprised at the actual dollar values but I wasn’t surprised at the result that Chris found.  For us, our entire focus has been on SEO.  We have used social media as a tool to augment that but not as a primary vehicle to drive revenue for the restaurant.  For instance, we have made a conscious decision to not set up a Twitter account where offer discounts.  It is something we’re considering doing in the future, but right now we aren’t utilizing social media in that way.

While this presentation gives you some information about my brick and mortar and the decisions that we face and have to make, have you taken these steps to determine the ROI of your efforts on your website, blog, or social media profiles?  If you have done this exercise, did you change anything about the way you spend your time post-analysis?

Note: This is the first post of many highlighting videos from the Inbound Marketing Summit that was held at Gillette Stadium on October 7-8, 2009.  All posts will be tagged ims09 for aggregation purposes.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

I think this is a great example of a brand thinking outside the box.  Most commercials, especially for upcoming music albums, are sheer promotion for the album.  This commercial takes you back to all of the fantastic albums that Jay-Z has released over his career.  While showing you the previous album covers, the new single, Run This Town, from The Blueprint 3 is playing in the background thus hyping you for the new album.

The commercial ends with a call-to-action to head over to the specially designed section of the Rhapsody site dedicated to the album release.  There you can listen to the album, send updates to Twitter and Facebook of your favorite songs from the album, comment on the commercial, sign up for a subscription to Rhapsody and a whole bunch more.

There is so much that I think is cool about this but I want to know what you think about it.  If this was a commercial for an artist you really liked, would the commercial and landing page make you any more likely to try Rhapsody and/or buy the album?

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