While not every business has millions of consumers walking through their gates each week, organic growth can be a powerful source of proprietary audience growth. But, as the lottery always says, “You have to play to win.” So even if you can’t tend to Facebook and Twitter constantly, it’s still wise to have official accounts for your business to facilitate these types of organic social interactions.
Resource Recommendations:
Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger (@j1berger)
Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead (@SallyHogshead)
Tactic #6: Product Packaging
There isn’t a man, woman, or child alive today that hasn’t spent some mindless time staring at a book cover, cereal box, or package containing the product of their latest desire. Product packaging often flies under marketers’ radar, but this key Owned Media asset is a veritable blank canvas of Proprietary Audience Development opportunity.
Your company’s humble product boxes and packages can be used to:
Send SEEKERS to your website or app: Turn showroomingd SHOPPERS to your advantage by providing a bar code or QR code that takes SHOPPERS (and CUSTOMERS) to instructions, demonstrations, and helpful videos.
Encourage AMPLIFIERS to share: With CUSTOMERS creating unboxing and haul videos,e packaging should clearly state how they can reference your company on Facebook, Twitter, and other social channels. Don’t make consumers hunt for your Twitter handle; print it on the box.
Convert CUSTOMERS to email SUBSCRIBERS: Packaging and printed instructions offer the opportunity to capture email SUBSCRIBERS by touting the benefits of subscription. There’s not a product warranty process today that shouldn’t leverage email opt-in, just as there isn’t a fast food company that shouldn’t use its bags, cups, and boxes to turn every meal into a long-term communication opportunity.
One last thought: Don’t forget your products themselves. Larger, longer-lasting products like automobiles and appliances afford the space to print a URL, bar code, or QR code right on them—resources that CUSTOMERS can use should they have issues in the future.
Audience Exercise #8: Read Your Breakfast
Go spend a half-hour in the cereal aisle of your local grocery store. General Mills (@GeneralMills), Kellogg’s (@Kelloggs_US), and Post Brand Cereals (@PostCereals) long ago mastered the box as marketing art form. But I want you to document how 10 cereals are engaging their captive, breakfast morning audience of READERS. In your opinion, which brands walk away from the breakfast table with more SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, and FOLLOWERS? Which create more AMPLIFIERS? What could they be doing better—and why?
Tactic #7: Email Opt-In Form
Tried and true, a simple form requesting VISITORS to subscribe to your email communications remains one of the best ways to grow your email SUBSCRIBERS. The key—as with any opt-in form—is to:
Make it simple: The more fields you have, the fewer SUBSCRIBERS you’ll gain. Ask for only the data you need (and see Tactic #8, Social Login).
Set expectations: Uncertainty as to “what you’re getting yourself into” is one of the prime reasons VISITORS abandon opt-in processes. Clearly articulate the frequency of messaging and the content SUBSCRIBERS can expect to receive.
Send a Welcome Email. New SUBSCRIBERS want to hear from you; and yet, only 74 percent of the retailers we recently surveyed send welcome emails.2 Engagement begins with the first email. Communicate clearly with new SUBSCRIBERS early and they’ll engage more in the future.
There are a variety of places where you can place your email opt-in forms:
Your website or blog home page
Your most frequented pages
The bottom of blog posts
Your About Us page
On a Facebook tab
Within a Twitter card
Within a Google AdWords ad
The bottom line: Place email opt-in CTAs in places where SEEKERS/VISITORS are most likely to see the value in an ongoing relationship with your company.
Resource Recommendations:
The New Inbox by Simms Jenkins (@SimmsJenkins)
Marketing Sherpa (@MarketingSherpa)—www.marketingsherpa.com
Tactic #8: Social Login
One of the worst things you can have in any registration process is friction—annoyances that cause people to abandon your form. Many VISITORS do not want to create yet another username/password combination for a website, contest, or email registration. Social Login eliminates this point of friction by letting consumers register with an existing social media profile. Facebook and Google are the most used social login options today.3
Social Login also provides you with more data than a traditional opt-in form. (See Figure 23.1.) For instance, when a user opts to register for an email program using Facebook Social Login, you can acquire the following information in as little as two clicks: