The Chameleon - Adaptive Marketing Ideas For Your Business

A lot of people and companies get caught up with how many fans, followers, and connections they have. While steadily increasing your network is important, don't judge your success on social media only by the size of your reach, but rather the quality of your connections.

In over ten years of working in sales and marketing I have yet to speak with a company that has said something along the lines of:

Since Thanksgiving is quickly approaching, we are hyper focused on giving thanks, but let’s not forget about the important of saying thank you the other 363 days of the year, especially if you are a business.  As a company, you are constantly promoting your product or service through the use of your website, emails, or social media, but just “being on social” or sending emails isn’t enough.  You have to interact, especially when your customers are talking to you or about you.

My pro tip for all you businesses out there: say thank you!! If I like a product or have a great customer service experience, I like to talk about it and share it with my friends and followers.  I am not an extremist so I won’t completely stop using that product or service, but if a company doesn’t tweet back, favorite or otherwise interact with my comment, I will not recommend them, either online or in-person.  However, if a company does interact, I feel like the most important person in the world at that moment in time and I tell everybody! To ensure I am not alone, I spoke with others who agree and actually made purchase decisions recently based on whether or not their social media “family” spoke highly of the company's customer interaction satisfaction.

Yes, that’s right, billion…with a B. According to BusinessWeek, consumers spent that amount with their local small businesses last year during Small Business Saturday.  Want you own slice of "Shop Small", but not sure what to do or have the marketing department resources? Your passion is your business, and lucky for you my passion is research so I scoured the web, spoke to consumers who frequently shop local, and found the top 5 tips for success on November 29^th.

Small Business Saturday (Nov 29th) is almost here! This is a great opportunity for local businesses to attract customers and even band together with other local firms. While there are a lot of way to maximize your exposure for this event, many of them need advanced planning. So, if you have put off planning until now, but still want to maximize your exposure, here is one way to make the most of SBS. 

Before You Read The Post:

I am more excited about this post than anything I've written lately. This message will hopefully open your eyes to the infinite possibilities of Inbound Marketing. I poured a lot of passion into this one, and the final product is quite lengthy. So, if you are looking for the general idea and some quick hit advice then continue reading. I omitted a lot of the detail in this post to make it easily digestable. If you want the full story, then head on over to LinkedIn to get the full article. 

I would love your feedback on this one, so please leave comments or email me directly.

- Patrick Sitkins

Core Benefits Group - Michigan

Core Benefits is an insurance agency located in Michigan. They came to us with an immediate website redesign need. They had a firm build their site earlier this year, but it was launched with incomplete information, placeholder text, and irrelevant images. The site was a mess. The CEO needed a site that articulated their offering, and was more in alignment with their brand. He also needed it done quickly.

As a relative newbie to the world of Twitter, I didn’t want to actually look like a newbie so I asked questions, performed Google searches, and even skimmed a book or two for advice.  Yes I am a bit of a nerd, but guess what…you benefit, so here is the most powerful tip I discovered:

We are a society built upon the backs of those who went before us, however the pioneers of today face a much different challenge.  When Lincoln gave the famous Emancipation Proclamation address in September of 1862 announcing the end to slavery, people did not receive a CNN Breaking News alert on their phone or email.  When Susan B. Anthony met Elizabeth Stanton in 1851, she didn’t tweet out to her followers: “.@ECStanton, can’t wait to start the charge towards our right to #rockthevote”.  Citizens across the country heard news of those events days, even weeks later via telegraph or if they were in more populous areas, read about it in their local newsletter.  My point here is only the big news received mention, not the day-to-day activity of the President, nor the poor fashion choice of Ms. Anthony marching in a protest for women’s suffrage.  Today, as we all know, is very different. 

LinkedIn, above every other social network, is the #1 place you and your team should be. If there was ever a place to “go where the influencers go”, this is it! While most professionals joined LinkedIn, we see very few that set up their account properly. If you are looking for answers about how to use LinkedIn, here are a few things to do today, to enhance your online visibility.