Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook.com, pronounced earlier this year at Nielsen’s Consumer 360 conference that in large part thanks to social media, email will soon have gone the way of the Dodo bird.
Her argument stems from the fact that in order to see what the trends of tomorrow are, we only need to look at what today’s teenagers are doing and the statistics she quoted say that only 11% of teenagers use email. She goes on to say that instead of email they use SMS and social networking tools.
Now, I can certainly see her logic about watching what the youth of today are doing, but I don’t know that I completely buy into the idea that email will be going away anytime soon.
First off, today’s teenagers aren’t in an environment that requires professional communication and exchanging of electronic data. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens once these ‘trend setters’ hit the workplace, but I imagine their communication habits will change accordingly.
Of course there’s always the possibility that something will come along, replace the functionality email provides and completely throw things onto their head, but from where I sit today I just don’t see that happening.
For most working adults, email is the lifeline of professional communications. Sure the Facebook message system is pretty cool, but would I really use it to send last months webstats or the presentation for an upcoming meeting? And even if I did, isn’t that sort of an email thing anyways?
At any rate, while I can see Ms. Sandberg’s reasoning ( and reasons for doing it…she is the COO of the largest social networking site after all!), I’m afraid I just don’t buy into it just yet.
What do you think? How do you see the relationship between social media and email evolving?
Go ahead and leave your comments below.
Also, check out what the folks over at Aweber had to say about this evolving relationship. It’s certainly an interesting and well-founded take from the folks that helped write the book an effective email marketing.
Believe it or not, everything you think you know about marketing is wrong. That’s right, flat out wrong.
Fortunately, it’s not really your fault. You see, what we today think of as marketing is something that’s been in the works for the past 1/2 century or so. It hasn’t always been this way, but because of the slow hijacking of the idea of what marketing really is, what we now think of as marketing is really nothing more than an attempt to build up name recognition.
Turn on the TV, flip through any magazine, open up most any telephone directory in any city, or drive along any major highway and you’ll see a never ending parade of attempts to simply brand a company. Or in other words, these companies are paying big bucks with the hope that when the time comes for you to buy a product or service they happen to offer that you’ll remember having seen their ad somewhere and decide to spend money with them.
As a small business, investing your hard earned dollars on the simple HOPE that someone remembers you at some time in the future is in my opinion, suicide!
So, if branding is such a bad idea, then how should you market your business?
Well, if we go back to the early days of selling and even up until the mid-1920’s and examine the type of marketing that was being used we’d see that it was all very much about telling a story and building a relationship.
Instead of simply trying to get someone to remember them, companies would paint a picture of life with their product or service in it. They’d go into as much detail as possible about why their product was better than the competition.
Unfortunately, over time as it became more costly to advertise companies started focusing more on branding instead of telling a story, painting a picture, and explaining exactly why someone should purchase their product or service.
In my next post I’ll share with you some videos that show clear cut evidence of how the focus of marketing has changed over the years. It’s a pretty eye-opening piece of evidence and I think you’ll find it interesting.
One of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year was to write a book. I’ve heard for many years and from many different people that “everyone has a book within them” and when I wrote that goal it was because I decided to finally act on that premise. I guess only time will tell if it’s true or not with me!
At any rate, I’ve started the process many times of sitting down to try and actually start the process. Needless to say, I haven’t gotten far.
And not to say that’s it’s been completely frustrating, but it has been a bit maddening, especially since it’s one of my goals that I really REALLY want to get knocked off this year.
So, what to do about this giant obstacle standing in my way?
Well, I was recently reading a book, Social Media 101 by Chris Brogan and I can’t remember if he just comes out and admits it or not, but the book is basically a collection of blog posts he wrote. Once I made the realization, it was like the light switch flipped on! (Yes, I’ll readily admit that it isn’t always on).
So, in following the example of Chris, and other well known authors as I’ve come to learn, I’ll be using my blog as a testing ground for my book. I’m hoping to follow the same basic structure and outline in my blog that I’ll be using for my book.
What will the book be about?
Well, since my blog is about local marketing and how you can do it more effectively, it only makes sense that the book will follow the same categorization.
Again, my goal is to have a completed book by the end of 2010 and since we’re already well into the 7th month of the year, it’s safe to say I have quite a bit of work to do.
I also know that no matter how painful or challenging it might be, my very first step is to sit down and come up with the outline or structure for the book. As I’ve been talking about, teaching, and helping countless small businesses with their marketing efforts for quite some time now, coming up with the content won’t be a problem. Organizing it into an easy-to-follow and enjoyably digestable format, if there even is such a thing, will be my biggest challenge.
So, if you haven’t already bookmarked this blog and you’re interested in getting a bird’s eye view at a book in the making, then go ahead and bookmark it right now.
If you don’t, that’s okay too, but I can’t promise there will be a blooper real at the end, so you might just miss out on a lot of the fun!
There are a lot of things that you as a business owner that provides products or services to a limited geographic or local area you can do to try and grab people’s attention and get them to pick up the phone or visit your storefront.
There is of course all of the traditional media like TV, radio, newspaper, and direct mail that are available to you. There are the many online tools and resources like SEO, PPC, email marketing, banner ads, social media, and various other methods as well.
But no matter how you decide to market your business, if you’re missing this one critical ingredient your marketing efforts will fall flat and you won’t generate the type of response you need in order to continue growing your business.
What’s this one ‘critical’ ingredient?
It’s a killer offer. You see, when you invest your money marketing your business, if you don’t have something to motivate your prospects to actually get off their rear and either pick up the phone, log onto your website, or stop by your shop, all you’re really doing is spending money on branding, and at the end of the day it’s not a very effective way to grow your business today.
Yes, having a solid, well-recognized brand is an important element to growing a successful local business. However, paying money to do anything other than generate customer RIGHT now is a deadly mistake that should be avoided at all costs.
So, what makes for a killer offer and why is it so important?
A killer offer is essentially the bait that gets your target market to identify themselves as interested and/or qualified in the product or service you offer. It’s the carrot you dangle in front of the horse so they’ll come to you.
What should you offer?
Unfortunately, that ones a little tougher to figure out because there’s really no one answer that applies to every business. The killer offer for a dentist will be very different from the home theater installer will be very different from the lawn care contractor.
The key to figuring out what to offer starts with knowing your target market and understanding what it is they’re really trying to achieve. What is it that keeps them up at night? What is it they really, REALLY want?
Once you have an answer to that question, put together a product or service that solves their problem and you have yourself a powerful offer that will generate interested, qualified prospects.
Now, chances are it’ll take a few times to really figure out what to offer your target market. Again, there’s no silver bullet that works for everyone or for every business so you’ll need to spend some time working on your solution.
However, once you come up with an offer that is powerfully motivating for YOUR prospects and customers, you’ll solve 75% of your marketing problems and your business will start to grow like crazy.
Already have what you think is a great offer?
Share it with us in the comments section. Tell us who your prospect is and what you’ve found to be extremely effective in getting them to take action.
