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Black Friday and Small Business

by Ron on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Is there such a thing as Black Friday for local businesses? I’m not sure. And I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

The whole notion of Black Friday is that it’s the “official kick-off” of the “holiday shopping season.” The quotes are because shopping doesn’t strike me as an activity like, say, deer hunting, that needs to have a “season” with start and end dates. In fact, both the shopper-as-hunter metaphor, with credit card-wielding consumers stalking elusive bargains between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the notion of a shopping season itself, seem more than a bit contrived.

The “shopping season” traditionally has been when large retail brands make a big fourth quarter investment in both promotional pricing and advertising to communicate those promotions. Car dealers do the same thing, with end-of-model-year clearance sales that combine price cuts with big media buys and creative that focuses on price.  The only difference is that the calendar isn’t as kind to car dealers: there isn’t a natural period for this promotional push. In other words, the “shopping season” concept is simply a marketing strategy for merchants that have enough margin and marketing budget to load their marketing when they believe consumers are closer to the point of intention.

image from http://static.squidoo.com

image from http://static.squidoo.com

In fairness to the big brands, shoppers may indeed get a bit of a thrill standing in a crowded line before dawn waiting to storm a big-box retailer and bag one of its “doorbuster” specials. Generations of women experienced a similar frisson whenever Loehmann’s had a sale. (However, it appears that both consumers and retailers have learned from last year’s Black Friday, where some stores were the scene of too much excitement.)

Another reason for questioning the “shopping season” construct is that so much price competition now takes place “out of season.” If shoppers are hunters, they do a lot of poaching! The internet has effectively obliterated whatever control large retailers exercised over information available to consumers. Between retailer and e-commerce sites, pure social networks and social shopping sites (soon to include Zavee), consumers now can easily locate, learn about and compare products and prices. As they are better able to make rational shopping decisions, consumers don’t necessarily restrict their purchasing to the fourth quarter. Indeed, given the ease and security of online purchasing conventional retailers feel price pressure year round.

So, what do Black Friday and the “holiday shopping season” mean for local businesses? First of all, high marketing spend to drive traffic for products with deeply promotional pricing is an approach with little relevance to most small businesses. This is not a big company strategy to emulate!

Second, to the extent that more consumers are out shopping at this time of year, consider tactics that play to your strengths, especially relating to service. If you are located in an area that sees increased traffic, why not offer walk-ins a cup of coffee, or a neck rub? If you can swing it, hire a babysitter to watch your customers’ kids – even while the parents shop next door. And if you have quality data on your customers, reach out to your best customers with an email, a card or even a phone call, just to let them know they matter and to invite them to drop by. Make sure they can reach you on social networks and always, always give them something positive to talk about.

What else should you do for Black Friday? Well, you could go shopping. There are supposed to be a lot of bargains around – some of them expressly for small business.

Update: Via MediaPost’s Marketing Daily blog: “Web-Savvy Shoppers Are Season’s Real Story”.

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Relevance and Authenticity

by Ron on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Valeria Maltoni recently posted on Conversation Agent about – among other interesting things – relevance and authenticity. It’s something that we think about a lot here at Zavee because we believe that consumers demand both from an online marketing platform such as a review site.

However, Valeria talks about these concepts in the context of in-stream advertising on Twitter:

Will relevance trump authenticity? Do you care if your friend truly believes in something he advertises if it’s relevant to you? This question goes to the heart of behavioral science and trust – you might want to think about it more than just a little.

Relevance matters because consumers demand the responsiveness brands are capable of providing. Brands are learning about their audiences and either developing products to meet their needs or finding the best audience for the products they have. McDonald’s has added new products and changed others to respond to the needs of an audience it now understands better than before. Cadillac realized that there was an audience for upscale American cars that was younger, more active and more diverse than the stereotypical Cadillac owner, and created fresh (if not perfect) new vehicles for that new market. Social media is an efficient way to promote relevance, because brands can respond to consumers in near-real time. This has captured the attention not just of brands such as Best Buy, with its twelpforce program that uses Twitter to engage customers, but also of brands such as … McDonald’s and Cadillac.

Effect of In-Tweet Ads?

Effect of In-Tweet Ads?

Authenticity matters because, if consumers are going to be influenced in their purchase decisions they want to be able to trust the source of that influence. It isn’t surprising that personal recommendations are more powerful drivers of consumer behavior than brand messages. If we trust recommendations from peers it isn’t just because they know what we like, or even that they know what they’re talking about, it’s because we trust them not to screw us when they recommend a product or brand.

We don’t think the long-term risk from sponsored recommendations is that consumers will be screwed, especially if those making recommendations both disclose that they are being compensated and are truthful in their suggestions. We think the greater risk is that consumers will become less trusting of social media generally and will require a deeper or longer relationship before relying on any online recommendation. That would be bad news for brands, because making consumers more cautious about relying on peer recommendations should be the last thing brands want to do. Their strategy should be to increase both the number and influence of their brand advocates. Sponsoring tweets and blog posts could be one of those strategies with short term benefits but long term costs.

Update (1/26/10): Fixed typo in last paragraph.

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Who Uses Review Sites? You Do (And So Do Moms)

by Ron on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

LexisNexis has issued its 2009 Online Ratings Survey, an online survey of 561 legal professionals, small business owners and consumers that was conducted by Lightspeed Research in April 2009. The survey has been reported on extensively online, including at XML Journal and WebProNews. The full results are available here. The surprising results of the survey are that small business owners are active users of these sites – even more so than consumers.

Here are some of the highlights:

  • 87% of small business owners surveyed and 63% of consumers have provided feedback on review and ratings web sites.
  • More than half of small business owners and 43% of consumers believed that review and rating web sites mean businesses are held to higher standards.
  • Businesses tended to trust independent third party ratings, while a majority of consumers considered reviews from actual customers to be more trustworthy.
  • Businesses’ greatest area of concern was false and malicious reviews.

More recently, a “mom-centered” site called momconnection.com surveyed 583 mothers with children under 12 (out of their panel of 5,000 moms) about social media and its role in helping them make buying decisions. The study found that utilization of social media was very high: 81% of the respondents said they were members of Facebook (but only 23% had Twitter accounts) and 60% reported visiting a social networking site in the previous 24 hours.

Moms Already Social Shoppers

via momlogic.com

The study also found that personal recommendations were by far the most powerful drivers of purchasing behavior, a phenomenon we have noted before. In its research brief on this study, Mediapost found it “surprising” that only 24% of respondents reported using Facebook in making a purchasing decision, and that far fewer used MySpace or Twitter.

We don’t find this data surprising and we certainly don’t find it troubling. First, social shopping is relatively new, especially on social networks like Facebook and Twitter which only recently have become business-friendly. Just as overall utilization of social networks has increased dramatically over the past few years, we fully expect that utilization for exchanging information and experiences about brands and products will catch up. Especially because, as the research indicates, moms interact with brands at a very high level. Not only did 81% report visiting a marketer’s web site for product information, 36% reported becoming a fan of a marketer on Facebook (which is a little difficult to reconcile with the 24% figure cited above).

What does surprise us is how many major brands haven’t fully committed to social networks as a marketing medium. How can moms be expected to use Facebook to connect with marketers if marketers in the categories moms care about aren’t using Facebook to connect with them? So if a mom says she doesn’t use Facebook to help her decide which breakfast cereal to buy, it may indeed be that she just isn’t comfortable using social networks to crowdsource purchase decisions, but it could be that the brands she cares about haven’t given her a reason to try.

Another interesting finding from this study is how moms get and share information about products. Although personal recommendations are by a wide margin the preferred medium, 41% of respondents report consulting “mom-focused web sites” for information (presumably including the sponsor of the research) and 34% get information from shopping web sites. 54% have shared their opinions by rating or reviewing a product online and 37% have posted about a product in an online forum or blog. For a group that doesn’t obviously include large numbers of early adopters, we think this shows a reasonably high level of engagement with social shopping.

If moms are already using socially-oriented web sites – but not Facebook or Twitter – to help them make better purchasing decisions, it may be that they have figured out which sites offer relevant content and a valuable experience and aren’t limiting themselves to the big social networking brands. That suggests two things: first, that as marketers make better use of Facebook and Twitter they will find a ready audience of social shoppers. And second, that consumers are willing to use social shopping web sites that don’t have the brand strength of Facebook and Twitter, at least so long as they provide value to the consumer. As observers of social media marketing we are confident about the first observation. As developers of a new social shopping platform we are optimistic about the second.

Update: This post about the Maclaren stroller recall illustrates how active moms are on social networks, and how much influence they can have over marketers.

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A Few Words About Word of Mouth

by Ron on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Since Zavee is a marketing platform for small and medium sized businesses, we think a lot about word of mouth (“WOM”) marketing. It’s a powerful and cost-effective tool, which makes it ideal for businesses that don’t have big marketing budgets. It’s also a natural fit for smaller businesses, whose owners inherently are closer to their customers than than in large enterprises. And with its focus on organically spreading a marketing message WOM encompasses (and perhaps even spawned) social media marketing – something else we think a lot about at Zavee. We aren’t the only ones thinking about WOM, of course. There is a WOM trade association, some major conferences, several blogs on the subject and more than a few books.

http://hearmehearmenot.wordpress.com/

http://hearmehearmenot.wordpress.com/

One of the things that caught our attention as we were developing Zavee was the inherent fragility of WOM, especially from the perspective of the smaller business. In our conversations with small business owners, we learned that they think of WOM as a cycle: a positive customer experience leads to a personal recommendation, which leads to a new customer, and so on. They aren’t quite as focused – yet – on influencer marketing, buzz marketing or other categories of WOM as larger companies might be. There’s no doubt, however, that personal recommendations are powerful drivers of new business. One global consumer study indicated that 90% of consumers trusted recommendations from people they knew. What makes WOM fragile, however, is how easily the connections that make up the WOM cycle can fail.


The very beginning of the cycle – the business providing the kind of experience that makes customers want to recommend it – gets a lot of attention, but in a way that’s the easy part. At least, it’s the part of the cycle over which the merchant has the most control.

The next step is much more problematic. The customer leaves with every intention of recommending the merchant. But like most emotional drives, it will remain top of mind for only so long. At some point the intention to recommend the business will dissipate, or be crowded out by other things, so it’s vital that the customer encounter a potential recipient of the recommendation before this point is reached. Some customers will reach out to specific acquaintances to make a recommendation while others will wait until they encounter an acquaintance serendipitiously or are solicited for a recommendation.

Then there is the issue of the person who receives the recommendation. Obviously, it must be someone with whom the customer is acquainted. But personal acquaintance isn’t enough. For the recommendation to have the desired impact the recipient of the recommendation must:

  • Have confidence in the customer generally as someone whose recommendations would be reliable – no one would act on the recommendations of someone they think is a flake
  • Have confidence in the customer specifically as someone who is knowledgeable and experienced in the relevant domain – if the customer knows about wine but not shoes her recommendation of a wine shop will be more powerful than her recommendation of a shoe store
  • Be able to understand the reason for the recommendation – this isn’t always an issue, and the intensity of the recommendation can count for a lot, but it certainly helps if the customer can effectively convey the merchant’s selling proposition
  • Be at the point of intention – the recommendation will be more powerful if the recipient of the recommendation is ready, willing and able to buy than if she has to remember the recommendation later on, when the emotional drive that she has “borrowed” from the customer has dissipated or been crowded out

As much as anything else, it’s timing that makes WOM fragile. If our hypothetical customer is solicited for a recommendation within the scope of her expertise by an acquaintance who is at the point of intention, the recommendation should be very powerful – unless the customer no longer remembers her experience so intensely or so favorably. If she reaches out to an acquaintance to recommend a merchant while her experience is still top of mind, that recommendation should be powerful, too – unless the acquaintance has just made a purchase from a different merchant or otherwise is not at the point of intention.

In a future post, we’ll discuss some things that merchants can do to make the WOM cycle stronger, and we’ll also describe how Zavee can help. In the meantime, let us know what you do to make WOM work for you.

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Tape This to Your Fridge (or Maybe Your Monitor)

by Ron on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Maybe it’s a sign of our collectively diminishing attention spans, but magazines (and blogs) seem to run more and more articles that are basically lists. There’s even a term for it: the “listicle”. (Want to guess what the graphic equivalent is called? Right, it’s a “charticle”!) Listicles often reflect shallow thinking and lazy writing, but sometimes they provide tremendous value, collecting and condensing a great deal of knowledge into the kind of piece you want to print out and tape to your refrigerator door.

I’ve recently come across two listicles of the latter kind, both from sources every small business owner should be following. The first is from Mashable, which provides all sorts of valuable information about social media. This post by Ross Kimbarovsky, who co-founded an online community of graphic designers that now exceeds 43,000 members, offers 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips. In addition to its overall clarity and conciseness, this post adds value in two interesting ways. First, it goes beyond Twitter and Facebook to explain some less widely known tools, including mobile/local social network Foursquare and brand consistency tools such as Namechk. Second – and at least as important – the post suggests both a basic and an advanced strategy for each of the 10 tips. This approach provides a road map for small businesses that are just starting out in social media or are unsure how extensive a commitment they want to make. This post recognizes that different businesses will have different needs and appetites for social media, shows businesses how they can mix and match different tools and provides a framework for increasing the utilization of social media marketing over time.

Deep in Conversation

Deep in Conversation

The second post comes via the Conversation Agent blog: a compendium of 25 Must-Read B2B Marketing Posts. I haven’t read all 25 yet but so far every one has been thought-provoking and several have provided significant value to our business; I imagine you will feel the same way. Business-to-business marketing frequently gets overlooked in the rush to market to consumers, so it’s great that some of the best minds in the social media space are paying attention to the needs of the B2B marketer.

This is by no means an original observation, but it really is amazing how much useful material can be found just by spending a little time searching the Internet. It’s even more amazing how many talented people have done so much of the heavy lifting by finding, evaluating, collecting and editing valuable source material for marketers like us. We hope you find these posts as worthwhile as we have. Please let us know how they work for you.

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Inbound Marketing and the Pushmi-Pullyu

by Ron on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Remember the pushmi-pullyu from the Doctor Dolittle books? It was an antelope with a head at each end, and try as it might it couldn’t get anywhere unless both ends cooperated.

via softwarefreedom.org

via softwarefreedom.org

Marketing has become a bit like the pushmi-pullyu. Consumers now have control over how and when they interact with marketers. Thanks to everything from caller ID to Tivo, marketers can’t force consumers to pay attention. They need cooperation from consumers if they want to be effective. It isn’t enough to “push” messaging at consumers. They need to get consumers to “pull.”

Marketing that is oriented toward the “pull” is called “Inbound Marketing.” The HubSpot marketing blog defines it as “marketing focused on getting found by customers [instead of] finding customers.” People who are looking for you are likely to be more interested and motivated than people you go looking for, and can become part of a community, not just a customer base. That’s valuable, because engaged customers are your most influential customers.

In some ways, inbound marketing is similar to conventional marketing. You still need content, targeting and a distribution channel. However, since you are trying to “get found” your targeting will be based on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and since you are trying to develop relationships, your distribution channels will consist largely of social media sites. In other words, according to HubSpot,

“Instead of interrupting people with television ads, [inbound marketers] create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in print publications, they create their own blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that people call them looking for more information.”

Who is using inbound marketing? As you might imagine, some of the biggest bets have been placed by the biggest companies. Perhaps the best-known inbound campaign is Best Buy’s “twelpforce” program, which empowers employees to respond to customer posts to the company’s twitter feed. Best Buy is hoping to engage customers by “answer[ing] product questions, troubleshoot[ing] technology challenges and solv[ing] customer service issues.” The program launched this summer and has been supported by a large promotional effort including national TV spots.

What about a business like yours? Is there a place for inbound in your marketing mix? Sure – just bear in mind that inbound marketing requires a commitment: as John McTigue points out in the Kuno Creative blog, inbound isn’t a “fire and forget” strategy and it isn’t free. On the other hand, it’s practical and measurable, and easy to adjust on the fly.

Is inbound marketing just the latest fad? We don’t think so. In a world where consumers can and will punish marketers for unwelcome or useless messages, obtaining permission and providing value – the essence of inbound – are the keys to effective marketing. Like the pushmi-pullyu, inbound marketing may be a strange-looking beast, but it is turning into a vital part of any successful marketing program. And that’s no myth.

Thinking about giving inbound marketing a try? Already out there with an inbound strategy? How has it worked for you?

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Join A Chamber of Commerce – Or Two

by Ron on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

As a business that is both new and community-oriented, Zavee is an active member of several Chambers of Commerce in South Florida. Some are large and well-established, others are smaller and haven’t been around very long, but they all operate on the same principle: that one of the best sources of new business is another business.

Our experience with Chambers has been mostly positive. We have met a lot of local businesses, some of which we hope will become Zavee merchants, and others we hope will be sources of referrals. We also learned a lot about the state of the small business economy in this market. On the other hand, we probably joined more Chambers than we needed to; next year we will prune a couple from the list.

All of the Chambers encourage networking, and some Chamber events are dedicated to nothing else. These events are a little like speed dating: you’ll meet a lot of people in not a lot of time, but you never know what might come out of it. Networking is like dating in another way: some people find it difficult to strike up a conversation, to break the ice. Our advice is to jump in and give it a try. After all, everyone in the room is there for the same reason, and many are as nervous as you.

Chamber events usually feature presentations on topics of interest to small business. They vary in scope, sophistication and promotional content, but some are outstanding. Recently, social media expert Jay Berkowitz gave a presentation to the West Boca Chamber of Commerce – one of the smaller organizations – that clearly and succinctly laid out the basics of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. We saw a lot of people taking notes that morning.

Chambers provide many different ways to increase your visibility with members beyond simply attending events and exchanging business cards with your table-mates. There are abundant opportunities to sponsor events, although some sponsorships can be pricey. Zavee recently sponsored a breakfast at the West Boca Chamber of Commerce.

The Zaveeists

The Zaveeists

This gave us the opportunity to make a brief presentation about Zavee while increasing our visibility within the business community. This sponsorship wasn’t very expensive but the West Boca Chamber is small. Serving on Chamber committees is a less expensive, but more time-consuming, alternative. We are joining the Technology committee of several Chambers whose sponsorships would be too expensive for us right now.

We suggest you reach out to several Chambers in your market. They are always looking for new members so you can be assured of a timely response to your email or phone call. Talk to members as well as officers and decide which Chambers are right for you.

Have Chambers of Commerce helped you build your business? Have some advice for businesses that are considering Chamber membership? Let us know in the Comments!

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