SOM zu: Online Ads Help Shoppers Save

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Artikel: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007524

Ein sehr interessanter Artikel, der mal wieder Zeit, dass uns Nordamerika doch immer wieder einen Tick voraus ist. Während man in Deutschland bei Coupons vornehmlich an Payback denkt, sind Coupons in den USA schon seit vielen Jahren fest etabliert und fixer Bestandteil vieler Kaufprozesse.
Mein Tipp: Es wird auch bei uns bald viel mehr Online Ads geben die einen Mehrwert in Form von Coupons bieten. Eventuell sogar auf die persönlichen Bedürfnisse zugeschnitten.

Anderer Meinung? Her damit!

Trends im Social Commerce by Hediye Evsan

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SOM on "5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online" by Dan Schwabel

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5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online

Posted using ShareThis

Presented above is the link to Mashable.com where this article has been published by Dan Schwabel.

Personal branding is without a doubt becoming more important in these days. Back in the days, when people could not easily connect with each other – especially not over thousands of miles – this may have been less important.
But todays networks allow to find out almost anything about anybody at barely any cost and at any time.
Ad 1) This includes good things as well as bad things, as this article also stresses in the very first point. Thus you should do the same and from time to time check what is being said about you on the web. Google, Yahoo, Bing, Google Alerts and SocialMention certainly are good tools for that.
Ad 2) Surely, it does not hurt to reserve your brand or company’s name on as many platforms as possible. But I agree with Dan in as far as you should consider well where you join. Not every platform is adequate for every business, brand or person. In fact you can often tell which social networks a person belongs to. Xing and LinkedIn clearly are for the educated business people, while facebook used to be a US college and university student only platform. This of course has changed in the meantime. Today users come from all age groups, social classes and continents. WKW users in Germany used to be less international and less well educated than those on facebook. But this needs close monitoring as the user groups do change over time. It may well be that LinkedIn will grow stronger in Europe now that they offer country-specific pages. Facebook on the other side could definately give StudiVZ and SchuelerVZ a hard time. Users definately have to choose between networks as -just as Dan pointed out- you cannot play all games at a time. Sooner or later you will have to choose as keeping several networks or communities up to date consumes too much of your precious (online) time. The characteristics and tendencies of your peers will determine the direction.
As to reservation: you surely can reserve your name ahead of time without using it. Maybe add a link to your primary profiles so that people find you. But there is no need to maintain say 30 profiles on 30 communities. It’s wasted time.

Ad 3) Know your audience. I’ve had several discussions with friends, colleagues and clients about whether it makes sense to have special profiles for each target group / audience. But in the end, what it leads to is again additional work and thus time. My advice is: do make a difference between people you term „friends“ and those who are colleagues on a solely professional level and clients. But by this I do not mean you need to create a fb profile for friends, one for colleagues and probably an additional one for clients. Facebook at the moment is still more of a private sphere, not a place to do business (brand/company profiles such as by Jaegermeister or BMW are brands we invite into our private sphere). Thus use fb for friends, good colleagues and family and use professional communities such as Xing or LinkedIn for business contacts. If a colleague becomes a friend add him on fb as well. In general: Keep it simple.

Ad 4) Be honest and be real. If what you put on the web differs greatly from your real personality, this will come back to you in a negative way. And if you are really present on all communities your clients may wonder what you be doing all day long. Surely not working for their benefit but rather on how you want to be seen on the web.

Ad 5) This point refers to all points mentioned before. If you want to be seen as a respectful, honest and trustworthy business person, you have to be authentic. The different profiles should speak one voice, arise no questions and in total provide a nicely rounded impression of who you are and what you do. And I would like to add: No need to be too formal. This may be interpreted as artificial, false, unrealisitic and not trustworthy. Be yourself. We like to do business with people we simply like.

This also goes for SOM Marketingberatung. The best clients are those that share similar values, are honest towards their customers just fun to work with.

So, mind your Digital Brand!

Yours,

SOM Marketingberatung

The New Democracy of Social Media

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Just the other day I read a statement by David Hughes, director of e-commerce at Marks & Spencer: „..the customer trusts the reviews more than the brand.“ Wow what a statement if you think about it. But what does that mean for brands? Are they becoming less important?

Brands usually serve as lighthouses. In the jungle of oversupply, businesses have to invest greatly into marketing and branding in order to make their products stand out from the rest. Usually it was like this: if your brand was not strong enough your quality was sometimes of no importance to the affluent consumer. The price tag provided the orientation. High price equals high quality. Low price must be low quality. Although strong trade brands by Aldi, WalMart, etc proved the opposite this was still a truism for many consumers.

Social media now further changes the game. A cheap DVD player may get better and more user reviews than the expensive alternative. Thus there seem to be new opportunities for economic brands: if their quality is convincing, their product features meet the consumer’s expectation and the consumer really has the impression to have made a good deal you are all set to be successful. This list sound familiar? Indeed: these are the ingredients for strong word-of-mouth. Why talk about a 200 dollar dvd player that is none the better than any other model? But if there is one model out there that offers the same features and decent quality for 100 dollars – that is something your friends might be interested in.

In the overall look, this is one manifestation of the new democracy provided by social media. You brands out there better prepare! You can no longer hide behind your brand image! Bad quality will be unveiled faster than you think with more reach than you might expect.

Altimeter on understanding customers' social behavior

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Another very good presentation by the guys from Altimeter, found on the page of we are social
Again everyone, thanks for sharing your insights!

We will comment on it as soon as we find the time to do so!

So far, enjoy!

Facebook's eCommerce Plans

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Inspired by an article by Paul Marsden on socialcommercetoday, I thought about facebook going social commerce and about Paul’s statements in his article.

I suppose a universal payment system on facebook is a must not an option. Performance of facebook has in recent months been fairly poor from time to time, so an additonal source of income would certainly help cover the enormous maintenance costs and hopefully improve performance. Just as back in the days when fb was a really lean community. I keep wondering if maybe fb is not growing at too fast a pace.
But you are perfectly right that commerce will have to go where the potential buyers are – either in terms of ad placements or cleverly integrated into portals. And I am also dead sure that Amazon will move closer to facebook. At the end of the day people want convenience. Why leave your web 2.0 home facebook to go shopping at amazon.com or elsewhere with all the numerous different logins? Instead, you could stay among your peers and even virtually shop together. This is actually what many of us already do using online stores and discussing products via MSN and Skype.
If you ask me, that will be the next step. Commerce will be social just as in real life.

As to performance – yeah right, it might slow down again if you embedd Amazon et al.

A Business Case for Social Media by Steve Latham

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Entega bringt mich ins Stadion der 05er

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Screenshot der Entega.de

Screenshot der Entega.de

Wer kennt sie nicht die unzähligen Gewinnspiele die im Rahmen von Mircosites, Webspecials und Co. versuchen User für eine Marke zu gewinnen. Ich denke jeder hat schon mal mitgemacht. Während nur wenige wirklich etwas gewinnen, so gewinnt der Veranstalter immer eines: Adressen oder sogenannte Leads. Sehr oft aber werden diese Gewinnspiele von den Usern schlichtweg ignoriert. Woran es liegt? Missverständliche Teilnahmebedingungen, wenig ansprechendes Design, unattraktive Preise, idiotische Gewinnspielfragen, kompliziertes Anmeldeverfahren, zu zeitaufwendige Schritte,… die Liste ist lang. Und an Premiumkunden, deren Zeit eh knapp bemessen ist, kommt man selten ran, zumal diese mit einer CD, einem Handy,… nicht zu ködern sind.
Es besteht also durchaus die Gefahr nur die „gewinnspielgeilen, zahlungsschwachen Kundengruppen“ zu erreichen, was die Leads wiederum entwertet.

Aber wie komme ich eigentlich auf das Thema? In meinem Falle hat mir ein Freund über Facebook einen Link gepostet der zu einem Gewinnspiel von Entega und Mainz 05 führte. Als neuer Hauptsponsor und mein persönlicher Stromanbieter also eine durchaus seriöse Sache. Und noch einmal deutlich attraktiver dadurch, dass mich ein guter Freund darauf aufmerksam gemacht hat und die Aktion gelobt hat. Ein klassicher Fall von Word of Mouth bzw. Empfehlungsmarketing in seiner vertrauenswürdigsten Form: Freunde. In Zeiten digitaler Informationsflut vielleicht sogar der effizienteste Weg der Vermarktung.

Anyways, die Gewinnspielseite sah sympathisch aus, war nett gemacht und übersichtlich. Die Gewinnspielfrage war einfach (vielleicht zu einfach) aber hatte einen Bezug zum Verein. Die Teilnahmebedingungen waren leicht verständlich, es wurden keine unnützen Fragen gestellt und man bekam eine Meldung, dass die Teilnahme erfolgreich war. Der Preis: 2 Freikarten zu einem Mainz 05 Spiel. Das Ergebnis: Eine persönliche Email, dass ich gewonnen habe! Sogar per sms bekam ich direkt von der betreuenden Agentur noch weitere Details – absolut professionelll und serviceorientiert.  Eine vielleicht bleibende Assoziation mit Entega als Stromanbieter? Die Karten lagen heute wie vereinbart zur Abholung bereit, an einer seperaten Kasse ohne großen Andrang. Die Plätze waren in der dritten Reihe, seitlich neben / hinter dem Tor. Was will man mehr. Das Spiel war in Ordnung, Kollege Lehmann aus Stuttgart hat mit seinen Aktionen dem Spiel die Krone aufgesetzt, was aber auch dazu führte, dass es letzlich zu einem Unentschieden gereicht hat und Mainz in der Hinrunde zu Hause ungeschlagen bleibt.

Website des FSV Mainz 05

Website des FSV Mainz 05

Was hat die Aktion gebracht? Nun, da ich bereits Kunde der Entega bin, würde ich es unter Loyalisierung verbuchen. Bisher nehme ich die Entega als sehr sympathischen Vereinssponsor war, und der Gewinn der Karten dürfte das noch verstärkt haben. Mein Freundeskreis weiß nun, dass ich das Spiel gesehen habe, dass die Karten über die Entega kamen, dass Entega Sponsor ist, und dass ich Entega gut finde. What more can you want? Ja, vielleicht, dass der Gewinner darüber auch noch twittert oder in facebook darüber schreibt. Ich jedenfalls habe kein Problem damit:

Danke Entega

Danke Entega

Entega_facebook

Entega sponsert Mainz 05 Karten

Quellen:
www.mainz05.de
www.entega.de

Have you ever used your printer in a way like this?

Using modern ways of marketing will bring you much more customers you intend. You don’t believe? Have you already seen the new „commercial“ of HP?