You can’t do everything that’s a fact, yet we try. Its a big thing for me but last year I learnt a huge lesson; distraction clutters the mind it doesn’t clear it! I spent 2010 trying to clear it. So 2011 for all of us, for all sorts of reasons needs to be about focus. We can’t afford from a cash and time perspective to go down blind alleys and avenues of little reward. Don’t get me wrong we need more ideas than we ever had before, the trick is to keep focused on the goals. I offer five marketing resolutions to guide:

1. Think about building a business community around your brand rather than a database of customers. You will need to encourage and facilitate a more participative and engaged customer in the future. Building a community will not only enable that but encourage the deep relationships you need to create. It does mean being more imaginative and creative.

2. You can’t do everything but what you can do is think about online first and offline second. In the last few years you needed an offline presence to develop an online one, its switched. Think SEO, content marketing, social media, online PR, reputation management and investing more in that website.

3. Get your messaging right. People, even in a B2B environment buy emotionally yet all our marketing literature and sales pitch is built around the physical aspects of our product/service. As there is so much ‘sameness’ out there, people are becoming increasingly interested in emotionally bonding themselves to your brand.

4. Move on from ‘customer service’ to ‘customer experience.’ There is a huge difference and its linked to building a business community. Some would argue that its the only competitive advantage we have left. We know that intense and intimate relationships with customers is of paramount importance. We have gone beyond buying customers through traditional marketing to increasing our loyal customers and that means labour intensive work on a people to people level not abdication marketing!

5. Return on investment. Not just financial returns in fact I don’t mean that. What I mean is increased customer retention, improved customer acquisition, cross and up selling, number of connections, number of interactions, number of influencers in your community etc etc. If you get those bits right, the financial returns will fall out the bottom.

2011 will be challenging. Getting the marketing formula right is a priority. Focusing on the key elements of marketing will help. Its changed radically and so does your marketing activity. That doesn’t mean doing more, it means doing the right things!

Brian Solis wrote an exceptional article last November on social media and traditional influencers, catch it here;

http://www.briansolis.com/2009/11/social-media-influencers-are-not-traditional-influencers/

Its interesting as it distinguishs the potential differences. However, if you’re moving that passive database to a proactive community, its more sophisticated than that. Any business community around your business will depend on differing levels of intimacy, different roles and distinctive connections.

We’ve already identified that it will have groups of people with different needs in the last post. To get to grips with this you start with the people who can have the most significant impact, not action, impact. Your ‘pillar’ influencers or as Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien call them “keystone influencers.” They are the same thing.

Brian Solis is right, these critical players in your marketing strategy, will be either offline, online or both. You’re ahead of the game if they are both. The first stage is to identify clearly who they are and segment them based on that premise,: online or offline. Then you can decide what you’re going to do with them that encourages dynamic interaction. Look at it in two ways:

1. Start with the offline people. They’ll be offline for a reason. What are you going to do with them that will encourage, collaboration, co-creation, innovation, product development, new referrals and a guiding hand on how your business grows? What are you going to give them? These are great team brainstorming events, believe me. In addition, you have an obligation to encourage these influencers to ‘dip their toe’ in the water of social media. It’s your responsibility to be honest.

2. Secondly, go and identify the online influencers and do the same.

Build an approach that is going to solidify the relationship and drive your business forward. However, the way in which you use technology and platforms will be different here. I know its obvious, but I have to say it. Build into the plan, physical meetings with these people too. I recently, met up with my top 29 Twitter influencers in my local region and its worked. I still have one to do.

All of the ‘pillar’ influencers will, strangely enough, have significant influence in their respective fields. They may be customers, suppliers, friends, businesses linked to your sector and even competitors.

Once you’ve created your plan, then start to connect with this small (not hundreds) number of people. It’s no different than creating a marketing communications plan. Just a point, understand why you are doing this. It’s not broadcast, it means using some shoe leather up and meeting, visiting and ‘eyeballing’ people whether online or offline.

This first step in the development of an engaging, alive business community is about enhancing and enriching existing relationships that are natural, energetic, appropriate and individual. And, perhaps by doing this well, it will lead to new relationships.

A shift is a shift only if it sits in reality and that’s what’s happened in marketing. Mass marketing is redundant. It used to be about reach and recognition accompanied by the blind faith that some customers would drop out of the bottom. Marketing these days is all about reputation and credibility. Let me simply explain:

Reach – Your companies profile, its market share. Broadcast was used to reach and hit millions of customers. It was about casting the net as wide as possible and occasionally you’d catch something. Sprat to catch a mackerel was the term.

Not only is this just not affordable anymore, its intrusive and interruptive. It sends a message but the wrong one. Reach is not about banging out something anymore hoping its right, where’s the economic sense in that. Reach is the complete opposite, its focused. Focused on your influencers. Its not hitting the millions. It’s the 10’s, 100’s or, if you’re fortunate, 1000’s of people in your community. The people who are fans on your company Facebook pages. The followers you have on Twitter and, just as importantly, those people on the database that are your advocates.

Recognition – You’ve heard the old saying; everyone knows the Ford brand but not everyone wants to drive one. The worst situation you can be nowadays is if people think indifferently about your brand. In essence recognition can engage the many but impact the few.

Recognition is approaching that influencer list in bite sized chunks by communicating your values, ethics and distinctive way of doing things. Its better to have a small group of people attuned to your very brand’s soul than have lots of people who are absent from you.

Reputation – The real differentiator. Influence a number of influencers and your marketing strategy is not just powerful but well on its way to being tremendously effective. Reputation is about making a remarkable impression on the people that matter.

Reputation is closely linked to credibility. You do not gain credibility by mass marketing anymore. You gain it by being transparent, trustworthy, open and by sharing. Powerful marketing now comes in having a freemium model.

I’ll be talking more about this in Exeter on the 27th May. Book here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/509178968

I’m cheating today, but hey if someone posts something concise and great, why not share it, it’s what blogging is about! Fabulous post by Seth Godin, got me thinking anyway.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/in-between-frames.html

It’s an interesting question. If social media is to, actually it has, taken over and because of the demands of the new marketing approach that’s emerging, why do we need a marketing department at all? In his blog post� http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/becoming-p2p-principal-characteristics-of-the-new-social-business/ Olivier Blanchard sets out that a P2P business (people to people) doesn’t even need a Social Media Director citing that social media is completely embedded in the organisation. He has a point!

Social media removes the need for one department to be responsible for marketing. Indeed, perhaps if a company does have a marketing department, they are completely subverting what social media can do. Marketing, in the future, will be about valuable conversations, enlightening collaborations and strong connections, all wrapped snuggly in a ‘word of mouth’ blanket!

In fact here’s a suggestion, if we are moving from B2C/B2B to P2P, perhaps we need to merge human resource and marketing departments. They have a lot in common in the suggested P2P environment. Retention of staff/customers, loyal customers/staff, great conversations, cultural shifts in expectations and bevhaviour, the way we treat people, the relationships we have, brand equity and so on and so on.

It makes sense, there is so much synergy between the two disciplines now that it would be a shame to miss an opportunity to add value to the P2P relationships we have both internally and externally. By the way, Olivier’s post is well worth the read!

Lets talk about something different, similarity! Groove Armada said it in their song ‘if everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other.’ Look around you, we do look the same. Coffee shops on the high street, marketing agencies, bottled water, training companies, banks, solicitors. Just go and compare these two sites; www.hellyhansen.com and www.musto.com and you’ll get a flavour of what I mean.

When your competitive advantages are the same, you have got to approach how you engage with your market place better, which is why I keep banging on about customer experience. Here’s a suggestion. Set up a new project team that meets on a regular basis. Make it cross functional and call it the ‘Disruptive Team.’ Their job, to disrupt the status quo, to discover what TRULY makes you different and to guide you swiftly away from similarity.

Undertaking something like this won’t destroy your brand, indeed, it might just be it’s saviour.