EFFECT[ive] Marketing…Connecting Real-Life Businesses with their Online Market

Marketing isn’t just for marketers any more (not that it ever really was). It’s a crucial core task for everyone in every level of every operation in every industry. So isn’t about time we drop the “marketing–speak”?

Often, jargon, the shorthand language subset peculiar to a particular profession or industry, serves a valuable purpose: it allows practitioners to communicate efficiently with their peers where otherwise they’d have to fall back on the lengthy terminology or phrases that that jargon fills in for. It allows medical professionals to say “stat” instead of “I need you to drop what you’re doing and come right away” (by which time the patient could already be a goner), and computer experts to use terms like API, CMOS, DDR and POP3 instead of, well…who really knows what those guys are talking about?

But too much of the time, jargon is simply used to demonstrate to outsiders that the jargonistas are part of an elite group, a secret club that wants you to know that you can’t play in their treehouse. And since you obviously aren’t one of them, you need to hire them because they know stuff you don’t.

IMHO (See? I can use jargon, too!), that’s definitely the case in the marketing industry—traditional and traditionally–trained marketers work in an arena where quantification is difficult, often impossible, and where keeping the flow of billable hours going often depends more on maintaining the impression of producing results than on actual results.

“Benefit segmentation,” “AIO,” “positioning,” “CPM.” The seemingly limitless lexicon of terms like these certainly has actual meaning and value among marketing professionals, but when they come out from behind the closed doors of the war room and toss them around in front of clients or the public, it’s not only not done for efficiency or clarity of communication, it actually impedes communication.

But “branding”? That one is different. That one just makes my skin crawl. And I hear it all day, every day. I’m sure you do, too.

You have to develop your brand. You need to protect your  brand. You’ve got to brand your brand. And when you brand your brand, you’ll be branding. Does anyone really know what it means? Am I the only one who’s sick of it?

So, at risk of life and limb and my shot at membership in the Marketing Illuminati, I’m about to reveal a secret guarded jealously for generations by black–robed monks (or at least guys in vested suits).

“Branding” is another word for reputation.

That’s it. That’s the big secret. Your brand is your reputation (or if you’re stuck in the 90s, your rep). Is it important to develop and protect your business’s reputation? Absolutely. Your reputation is everything. And focusing on it, guarding it jealously, proactively improving it by diligently, patiently improving your level of service and your connection to and communication with your customers, and your awareness of and reaction to what’s being said about you on the Web, is the single best strategy for growing your business over the long haul.

But please—can you do all that without calling it “branding”?

And the next time a marketer or salesperson starts tossing out terms you don’t know, politely stop them and ask them to start from the beginning in plain English. If they can’t do it, kick them out or run away. And if they talk about branding, you have my permission to hurt them.

A (one-time) major player in the (pre-big-box) midwestern retail grocery industry, Marsh Supermarkets last week launched their very first viral marketing campaign with a $10 coupon for their Facebook fans. It crashed and burned. Badly. What went wrong?

Marsh Supermarkets, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, has a Facebook page with about 3,300 fans. Last week, when they had about 3,100 fans, Marsh posted a message on their wall offering a $10 in-store coupon to their Facebook fans, old and new alike. The offer was posted for one day, only on their Facebook page, and linked to a printable coupon.

What happened? Their fans responded to the offer. Boy, did they ever.

But they didn’t just print the coupon for themselves; many of them forwarded the link to their friends, who forwarded it to their friends, and so on, and so on. No numbers have been released, but it’s probably safe to guess that, on the very low end, more than 10,000 coupons were printed. Sound like a successful viral campaign? I’d say so. Those coupons represent a whole lot of bodies through the doors of Marsh’s stores, each ready to spend money. And nowadays, going head to head with WalMart, SuperTarget and Meijer (an aggressive midwestern big-box chain), Marsh could surely use that money.

So how did Marsh respond? The offer ended on schedule on July 29th. But on July 31st, Marsh panicked. They posted a note on their Facebook page that said, in part:

“Unfortunately this offer has been widely distributed in an unauthorized manner throughout our marketing area. Due to the vast numbers of inappropriately transmitted and replicated copies of this offer, we will no longer be able to accept these coupons in our stores.”

(To their credit, they did include an apology.)

Unauthorized? Inappropriately? It’s the Web. You put up an easily replicable coupon, people are going to jump on it. Times are tough, and people need groceries.

But apparently, it never entered the collective mind of Marsh’s marketing department that people receiving a coupon offer on the Web might not want to hoard it.

The Web is a social medium.

People find things they like, they share them. That’s really not news where I come from (and I come from literally just down the road from Marsh’s corporate headquarters).

[As an aside, I'm currently reading (and enjoying, and learning a tremendous amount from) David Meerman Scott's new "World Wide Rave," which directly and comprehensively addresses viral marketing. I wholeheartedly recommend the book and Scott's blog to anyone considering the jump into online marketing (but most of all to Marsh's marketing department).]

So what went wrong? Did Marsh fail to prepare properly for the promotion? Should they, as many commenters on their Facebook wall and on the Indianapolis Star/News website’s story on the debacle have noted, have prepared better? Without a doubt. A little homework on viral marketing (like reading a good book) wouldn’t have killed them.

But I’d say the real problem with the promotion was that Marsh was utterly unprepared for its success. They apparently thought the math was simple. They’d give up about $31,000 in coupon discounts. That number, for them, had value. That is, they had to believe that redeeming $31,000 in coupons would bring in more than that much in sales. Otherwise, the promotion would never have made it past the bean-counters.

So my question is, if the promotion was expected to yield a positive return for Marsh at the $31,000 mark, what changed at the $100,000, or $250,000, or $500,000 mark? Were the rest of those people expected to walk the aisles with coupon in hand, searching for an item that cost exactly ten dollars? Not likely.

More coupons meant more people in their stores. More people in their stores meant more sales.

But here’s the worst part: Marsh has for years offered a “Marsh Fresh Idea Card” that, like any such store card, has personal information attached to it. Does the technology not exist to tie the use of the coupon to the customer’s card to prevent multiple redemptions? It seems unlikely. And doing so would have motivated coupon-holders who didn’t already have a Fresh Idea to obtain one. Seems like a win-win-win for Marsh. More traffic, more sales, more customer information in their database.

In the end, though, Marsh took a wildly successful “World Wide Rave” and, instead of riding it out and reaping the rewards, deliberately turned it into a crushing customer relations failure. Marsh ended up with a bad taste in their mouth for online promotions, which is tragic, and with tens of thousands of local customers, potential customers and former customers who are furious with the chain – which is beyond tragic. For a company teetering in Marsh’s position, it could just be fatal.

But don’t feel bad. Mine doesn’t either.

A sizable portion of my business is getting small business owners online exposure for the first time. And naturally, the first step most of them want to take is to get a website going (natural because it usually stems from a fair percentage of their customers asking them, “Do you have a website?”). It took me a while to learn, but now I have a standard disclaimer/speech I give every prospective client. I think it’s good advice for everyone in business, especially newcomers to the Web:

Once your website is live, don’t expect it to perform miracles. You’ll be disappointed. It won’t lure new customers the next day. It won’t get your business into Forbes or the Wall Street Journal. It will be a very tiny needle in a very, very big haystack (a haystack that’s growing every day).

In fact, your website isn’t going to do anything. It’s just a tool. And like any tool, it won’t do anything if it just sits there. If you were building, say, a deck, you wouldn’t get frustrated with your hammer if it didn’t pound in all the nails by itself, would you? You pick the right took, and then you have to use it.

You’re trying to build your business. Don’t get frustrated with your website (or with me) if it doesn’t do anything. You have to use it. Get the word out about it. Let people know it’s there, and why they should visit it. Put your URL on everything you send out, put up and give away. Put it on the side of your car. Put it on the top of your car. Put it on your wall. Put it on your bags. Ask everyone you know to tell everyone they know – by word of mouth, by phone, by e-mail, by news release, by Facebook, by Tweeting about it, by blogging about it.

In other words, don’t look at getting your website up as the end of your online marketing campaign – look at it as the beginning. If you don’t use it, it’s a wasted tool (but at least your neighbor isn’t likely to ask if he can borrow it).