Make it Easy for Customers

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The other day I was helping a new client plan out marketing materials for an upcoming event and asked if he was using QR Codes on all of his materials.  I explained that many people are now scanning them and then using them to do research or deal with retention issues associated with information overload.

The items in your QR Code should be:

1. Direct link to the landing page for the event or product promoted at that event so the visitor doesn’t have to hunt down what they were interested in.
2. Your phone number
3. Your Email Address
4. other pertinent information that you wanted stored in their contact list
   1. hours of operation
   2. Your name
   3. Your Address
   4. Other web sites you want them to know about (blogs, product micro sites, etc.)

Oh, and if the back of your business card isn’t already in use, put a QR Code there.  It shows you respect their time by having them avoid manually typing the data into their contact database.

Is It Important?

Well if  you don’t think this is important enough to add to your marketing material, maybe this article might change your mind:

Half of U.S. shoppers rely on phones for in-store research

Good Hunting!

Related articles

• How to use QR codes at events (clairesouchet.wordpress.com)
• 9 Unique Ways to Generate Leads With QR Codes (hubspot.com)
• QR Codes Aren’t Sweet Without Strategy (stargroup1.com)
• How To Create A QR Code [VIDEO TUTORIAL] (seanclark.com)
• Are We Really Ready for QR Codes? (forbes.com)

6 of Apples Greatest Mistakes

With all the ‘Steve Jobs‘ posts flooding the internet, this one caught my eye.  It is not a Apple bash piece but rather a great object lesson for those that get caught up in the “Aim, Aim, Aim, Ready, Aim, Aim, Fire” mode.

By Scott M. Fulton, III / October 6, 2011 2:03 PM

Image via Wikipedia

This is not an Apple-bashing piece. It is also not an attempt to cut an American icon down to size at a time when were remembering the magnificent contributions of its fallen founder. This is about how failure makes us better.Ive lost count of the number of times Ive heard, seen, or read comparisons of Steve Jobs to Thomas Edison since early yesterday evening. Jobs did not invent anything – not the personal computer, not the MP3 player, not the tablet. But besides that fact, there are certain other stark similarities. One: Jobs, like Edison, was a fierce competitor who sought to control not only the delivery channel for his products, but the market surrounding those products. Two: Like the finest scientist, Jobs studied his failures and Apples very carefully, and unlike Microsoft, built his next success upon the smoking ruins of his failures.More Steve Jobs Stories6 of Apples Greatest MistakesSteve Jobs Legacy In the Pantheon of Great American InnovatorsFrom Silicon Valley to Bahrain, the Web Mourns Steve JobsA Great User Experience: The Web Legacy of Steve JobsWhat Steve Meant Back ThenReaders will likely remind me that certain of the

via 6 of Apples Greatest Mistakes.

Marathon Not Sprint

As I mention in my “Failure is not a Title” post, we need to look at things as a long process that we learn from, a Marathon if you will, not a 100 yard dash.  Yes, the above mentioned items are on the bottom of some outhouse of ideas, but the industry learned from then and evolved into what we have today.

Good Hunting

Related articles

• Think Different – The Legacy of Steve Jobs (legallyeasy.rocketlawyer.com)
• Steve Jobs Reinvented What It Means to be Human (forbes.com)
• An Analogy of Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs (nytimes.com)

Ban All Mirrors!

We handed out our traditional Christmas gifts to the contracted cleaning crew today. Nothing special, just some home made cookies my wife worked on for several days. One of the ladies, now a regular we have come to know and appreciate, made some funny statement like “Great, that’s all I need is some more pounds!” We all laughed.  She explained she walked by a mirror in her house the other day and her reflection shocked her. My response – “Ban all mirrors! That would solve the problem!”

The Real Problem – Not Enough Mirrors.

In truth, we don’t have enough mirrors in our lives. In business, we become so focused on the next deal, the next deadline, the next pay period, the next ….. OK you pick. We lose sight of our reflection in the mirror.  We don’t even bother to look most times.

Mind you, everyone else still sees us. Our employees. Our family. Our friends. Our Vendors. Our clients.  They don’t see us as a reflection in the mirror.  They have the luxury of simply watching us in our daily struggle to focus on the next thing.

Difficult Solution – Put up more Mirrors!

The strategy is simple, create an accountability network.  The tactic is difficult to implement.  There is a reason why peer accountability groups work.  Left to ourselves, we are our own worst enemies.  Finding a peer to trust is hard enough, finding someone you look up to is very bold.

Customer Service Mirror – find someone, maybe a trusted client, and review your company’s performance.  What’s working, what’s not.  What are they seeing your competitors doing.  What do they wish you would do

Leadership Mirror – are you creating bold audacious goals for you and your teams?  Who is reviewing them with you before you make your presentations.    Who is raising the bar, making you think of options outside your comfort zone?  Who laughs at you when you come up with a real stinker but you think it the next revolutionary idea?

Management Mirror – who is helping you improve you systems, processes, and staff?  Who’s helping you develop a performance model that fits your team’s talents and abilities?

For the sake of this post leadership and management are defined this way.  If a ladder was leaning against a wall, management would be focused on the most efficient and productive use of that ladder where it stands, leadership would be responsible for making sure it’s leaning on the right wall.

Social Media Mirror – it’s not just the people around you any more folks.  As Matt Hames states in his Web 2.0 posts, now it’s also your digital presence that is being looked at.  What you do on the internet, but also equally important, what is said about you on the internet becomes the new dimension to the mirror’s reflection.  Do you have someone helping you with your global perception?

Conclusion

Wow, all this from a bunch of home made cookies for Christmas.  I hope this post has a longer lasting quality then my wife’s baked goods.

I hope in the future when you walk by one of the mirrors in your life you are not shocked by what you see.  And I hope, for your sake, that it’s not too late to correct what you see.

Good Hunting,

Motrin, Social Media, and the Brand Manager’s Bad Day

Brand Managers have a new world to live in. No longer can they sit back and decide such things as when, to whom, where, and what information they will deliver to the world. They must now worry about how quickly they may need to respond if something goes terribly bad. Social media has reduced the feedback cycle time to seconds, not weeks or months. Reaction time is so short that any misstep will cause brand value to plummet faster then the price the rare spiders at an arachnophobia convention.

Blog Social Media Buzz

I ran across a marketing blog post (Motrin Babywearing Ad/PR Debacle) and it referenced Motrin ad and baby carriers. I was curious. Normally I would not go hunting down this type of discussion but for some reason this caught my eye. I viewed the YouTube ad and posted a comment on the blog.

TweetDeck Global Search

Continuing my curiosity, I used my TweetDeck (Twitter Interface) to set up some global searches for hashtags and phrases I thought relevant, and wow, did I get flooded with feedback. I specifically searched “#motrin OR #babycarrier OR #motrinmoms” for the hashtags. I also searched for “motrin OR babycarrier OR motrinmoms” thinking I would also capture all the people not using hashtags.

Firestorm an Understatement

My TweetDeck makes a sound each time it updates the deck, in this case my two searches. Those two columns of information have not stopped updating all day. There are some very angry moms out there and they are using Twitter to express their rage. There are also a bunch of folks that are very apathetic to this ad that can’t seem to understand why everyone is so upset.

Either way, there is a brand manager out there that is eating Motrin like candy right now …. wishing this firestorm would pass.

Good Hunting,

Post Post Update

Since I originoally put out this post there have been some interesting videos that have surfaced that I thought would be of interest.

Motrin Ad Parody: The entire Motrin Mom (motrinmom) episode could have been avoided if this ad would have been released because the negative and positive responses would have done nothing but improve the brand standing ….. and make a bunch of people laugh themselves wet.

Mad Motrin Mom Tweet Video: Here is a 9 minute YouTube video showing some of the responses posted by #motrinmoms moms on Twitter!

Outraged Baby-Wearing Mama: First of all, if this is outrage, then I don’t want people showing up and my house because I’m afraid how they’d label me! This is actually one of the best responses I saw given the firestorm on Twtiter.

Noise To Signal Cartoon

Found this great cartoon about the brand manager’s bad day!

Business Twitter Ideas

I’ve been reading some interesting posts on Twitter tweets with the tag marketing and I have been trying to understand the relationship between the two. Mind you, I loved the posts, just not sure about how some people tag their work. No biggy really, but I wanted to see if I could come up with some examples of how Twitter could be used to create a brand, (personal or corporate), and if not, just have some fun with it.

First let me start by saying the two posts that got me thinking about this topic are Twittiquette by Ron Shevlin and Twitter for Business — What’s Appropriate? by philbernstein

Fun Stuff – BOSS Tweet

This idea, I originally, came up in the 90’s as “BOSS Cam” in which you place a wireless video camera on your boss’ forehead and can see where he is all the time on a PC window. I’ve adapted this concept to Twitter Tweets, but it does require a RFID implementation of sensors throughout your campus and RFID markers in your security cards used to gain access to buildings and rooms.

With this implementation you will get BOSS Tweets when the following happens:

• Parking Lot Entry – The Boss has arrived – you have about 15 minutes to look busy.
• Building Entry – You now have about 7 minutes to make your office look like you’re really busy.
• On the floor – Have your boss’ cup of copy ready in hand and ready to give
• Movement Tweet – he’s moving about the building and you know where.
• Mining Tweet Alarm – uncomfortable levels of methane are in his office, STAY AWAY! (methane monitoring equipment sold separately)
• BOSS BOSS Tweet – your boss just met with his boss, HIDE – WORK IS COMING YOUR WAY!
  • Note: use Movement Tweets to evade your boss for the entire day if necessary.
• Parking Lot Egress – time to stop hiding from your boss and get some work done real quick and go home.

OK, another example of American ingenuity and exceptionalism in the can!

Branding Exercise – Project Tweet

In this example, your team has landed a new client. You want to impress on them how great your company is, and especially how great they are at projects like the one the just won. You explain to your new client that you will be using Twitter to keep them updated as the project progresses through the different stages of project management.

Some things they can expect to see in the Project Tweet:

• Meeting Titles – and who attended
• Meeting action items – post meeting
• Key milestones or meeting action items delivered
• Gratuitous comments from the team stating how smart the client was for picking them!
• Documents updated on the shared project library
• Lots of positive statements with the client’s staff names included so they are all sitting around waiting for their names to show up on a tweet.
• “Hey check this out” messages asking them to head to the team web site and review something

I know some of the themes of twitter BLOG posts have been about ‘too much’ tweets, but in this scenario, the more tweets focused on the project, the better you look.

Good Hunting,

See Also

Twitter’s Design Flaw