Two-Way Street

I was looking at a business’s Web site recently.  Out of curiosity, I clicked on the social media icons prominently placed on its home page.  What I found amazed me.  All of the messages on all of the social media talked at whoever might be checking the message.  I did not find any attempt to engage the recipient.  The messages were ads sent via social media. 

Why do I call these ads?  An ad is a preconceived, predesigned, and prewritten communication.  It is created by the business to elicit a particular result.  This doesn’t make it bad, but in social situations ads are inappropriate.  Using an ad on social media is akin to walking into a party and giving a prepared speech.  If you did that, would anyone at the party pay attention to you?  I don’t think so.  Rather than having conversations with individuals at the party, you are talking at the entire group.   

Too many businesspeople talk at people online as a group rather than engaging them in conversation individually.  They are so accustomed to traveling a one-way street of talking at people via traditional advertising on TV, print, radio, and outdoor that they don’t stop to think the Web is different.  They don’t realize that the best use of the Web is as a two-way street.  The Web is an opportunity for conversation and interactivity.  It is a unique place to answer customers’ questions, inform them, and learn more about them.  It offers platforms to develop relationships with customers.    

Remember, social media is social.  Social does not mean directing a canned, prepackaged announcement at recipients.  Social means giving recipients a reason to pay attention because your message may pique their interest, invite their participation, or prompt their response.  They know that your message will likely be something worth their time.     

Social media is not the place for advertising.  Social media is a place for conversation.  It is an opportunity to initiate and continue an exchange of information with others.  Hopefully, these exchanges develop leads, convert prospects to customers, and prompt further purchases from current customers.

Take a look at your social media messages.  Are you talking at an entire group or having a conversation with individuals? 

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Message Not Received

Two weeks ago I had the unfortunate experience of losing power for forty-two hours.  When the power went out, I immediately called the electric cooperative which supplies my power.  I used my cell phone to do so.  My landline phone is cordless and runs on electricity.  It was not functioning.  Twenty-four hours later the power had not been restored.  This surprised me because the electric cooperative is usually very prompt at fixing problems.  Wondering the cause of the delay, I called the cooperative. 

The lady who answered responded defensively, “Our crews are working as hard as they can to get this fixed.  They have been working non-stop for twenty-four hours.”

“What is the problem?” I asked.

“They are slogging through fifteen inches of wet, heavy snow.  In some instances they have to put up new poles and string new wire.  All that must be double-checked.  They are doing the best they can.”

“But what is the problem?” I repeated.

Finally, she answered my question in an exasperated tone. “The snow took down trees and branches which took down power lines and poles.  Every one of our townships throughout the county is affected.  The problem is so massive we have brought in crews from several other cooperatives to help us.”

The problem took another eighteen hours to fix.

Shortly after the power came back on, I checked the messages on my backup voice mail that I access from my cordless phone.  The first one was from the electric cooperative thoroughly explaining the reason for the outage, stating that they were working hard on it, and informing that they had brought in additional crews to assist.  The message had been sent two days prior on the heels of the outage.  After listening to the message, I realized why the lady at the cooperative seemed so vague in her answers and exasperated over my questions.  She thought that I should have known all of that information because of the telephone message that the cooperative had sent.

I sat back and smiled.  Then I chuckled.  Finally, I laughed out loud. 

The electric cooperative had developed a plan for how to handle a massive outage.  A part of that plan was to inform those affected so that they would know what was going on.  All of that was very smart and commendable.  However, they missed one important consideration.  Most people today have cordless phones.  These phones run on electricity.  When the power is out, messages sent to those phones will not be received.  In order to have the plan work, the cooperative needed another way to contact people.  A cell phone would be a good option. 

Upon reflection, I realized that there is a lesson or two here for all of us.  One lesson is to be certain that your intended recipient can receive the message you are sending.  If your recipient can’t or won’t receive your message, you haven’t communicated, have you?  With today’s technology, many of us blissfully send out communications and immediately assume they have been received.  Perhaps we are not wise to make that assumption.

Another lesson is to look for the hiccup in your plans.  As you know, I am a big proponent of plans.  However, I know that, just like their creators, plans are not perfect.  Taking another look, especially by someone unfamiliar with the plan, is smart.  That person might see the hiccup.  Someone outside the cooperative might have noticed that those with cordless phones which operate on electricity would not receive the message. 

Take another look at your messages.  Are your intended recipients receiving them? 

This week's marketing trivia challenge is What instance have you experienced where you could not receive a message? E-mail me your answer.   

 

Meaningless Message

A Toyota dealership in my area recently moved into a new facility off the new bypass. As the facility was being constructed, the dealership ran TV ads promoting that the new location was opening soon. The message of one of these ads was “We built it for you.”

The first time that I heard this ad, I responded out loud, “No, you didn’t. You built for yourself.”

I considered writing an Insight about the message. However, I did not, hoping that this was an ad that had been put together quickly and would not continue.

Was I ever wrong!

Evidently, this was the start of their major campaign about the move. I heard the commercial a couple of times, and then it was not on the air for a few weeks. When the new facility opened, however, the commercial aired multiple times a day. During the opening campaign all the business’s TV and newspaper ads used this theme. “We didn’t build it for us. We built it for you. The new facility is everything that you‘ve been looking for.”

Not only was the business continuing the “We built it for you” theme, it had emphasized the theme by adding that “We didn’t build it for us.”

Okay, who buys that? Do you buy it? Do you think any business builds a new facility for its customers first? I don’t. I think that a business builds a facility because management thinks the bottom line will benefit with the new building. In this instance, management wanted to tap into the new bypass, which has an enormous amount of traffic.

What does a customer get from the new facility? I have no idea. I guess “everything that I’ve been looking for.” Well, I have never looked for anything in a car dealership facility. If you asked me what I would want in a car dealership facility, I could not tell you one thing off the top of my head. As most customers, if I thought about it for a while, I probably still couldn’t tell you what I would want in a car dealership facility.

Have you ever bought a vehicle because of the dealership’s facility?

I haven’t. I bet no one has.

The ads did not give me any clues as to what the new facility offered me, either. There were no specifics of what’s in it for me as a customer of the new facility. Backing up this statement with facts would have been more effective. Telling me what the facility offered “that I’ve been looking for” would have been informative and interesting. That would have put meaning into the message.

Advertising messages are effective only if they have meaning to the customer. Otherwise, they are a waste of time and money.

What do your advertising messages mean to your customer?

Brevity

“This is John Smith at 652-3400. Call me back, please.”

I received this message on my voice mail today from a person unknown to me. Although I immediately deleted the message, I have been mulling over its positive and negative aspects.

On the positive side, I am intrigued. Who is John Smith? Why did he call? What did he want? Should I have called him back?

This, of course, was precisely what Mr. Smith wanted me to think. He wanted me to be intrigued. He wanted my curiosity to prompt me to return his call. I have had to restrain myself from calling back. By telling me little, he piqued my interest.

That’s a good lesson to remember; less is more.

On the negative side, this person’s unwillingness to tell me why he called makes me very suspicious. My he’s-trying-to-sell-me-something antenna are waving crazily. Questions plague me. Why wouldn’t he tell me the purpose of his call? Was he calling me in particular or am I merely on his calling list? (I suspect the latter.) Why did he decide to call me?

These thoughts led me to remember a billboard that I drove past recently. The billboard’s message was short: Because stuff happens. In addition to being brief, the message was written upside down and backwards. That grabbed my attention!

Both the billboard and the caller delivered their message with brevity. That’s not easy to do. Distilling your message into a few words is tough. Having those words actually get attention is tougher. Assuring that the words communicate your message is the toughest.

While the caller accomplished two of out of three with a short message that got attention, the billboard achieved all three. Even more, the billboard’s message did not destroy credibility; the caller’s message did.

Do you communicate your message with brevity? If not, doing so will require thought. Brevity is not just a few words. Brevity is a few words that communicate your message well. Sit down and think through your message before you attempt to abbreviate it. Then, run your abbreviated message past a few customers to find out how well the words that you have chosen communicate your message. Apply your customers’ input to tweak and finalize your brief message.

Then use it on everything.