Welcome back inkheads!
You may have noticed that our blog stopped dead in its tracks after Tuesday of last week.
No, we didn’t decide to throw in the blogging towel; yours truly attended Demand Success Marketing and PR conference from the fine folks at Vocus.
Before I share some insights from my personal marketing hero Chris Brogan, I want to express my sincerest thanks to the entire Vocus team for all their hard work and hospitality. Extra special thanks to Senior Social Media Community Manager Stacey Miller aka Social Media Stacey. Stacey’s simply captivating in person, and I watched her go the extra mile every day to keep the conference running smoothly. How’s about a CMYK salute to Stacey?
Stacey’s efforts at Vocus serve as the perfect segue into New York Times Best Selling Author Chris Brogan’s presentation entitled, Get Your Freak On for Success. Now I’m not saying Stacey’s a freak, although I hear her NASCAR obsession is quite intense. Stacey demonstrates the importance of community daily as she always engages the Vocus social followers. And by engages, I mean that she actually interacts with people and treats them like human beings. In fact, several of the folks I met at the VIP events also connected to the brand through Stacey. We can’t all be marketing thought leaders like her, but we can certainly learn a lot from her example and Chris’ sage advice.
The business of belonging
Luckily, I’m able to embed Chris’ Demand 14 presentation here directly for your viewing pleasure:
Chris explains the concept of Monchu, which is an Okinawan terms that means your family of choice as opposed to your family of birth. Not all of your customers or social community members will fall into this category because these people are your brand’s true tribe. At the same time, these hardcore consumers are really the people you need to please, not the new prospects you’re trying to attract.
@CaliCre8ive @SohoTechTraing @avinash – everything is dying. Ride the ship that gets you to the treasure. Who cares what it is?
— Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) June 10, 2014
I hope this point resonates with the printing community because most of the dialogue I see revolves around convincing people to give print a chance and revive the medium from its deathbed. I have one question for all the printing companies beating the print’s not dead drum:
Who cares what the paper haters say? Why are you dignifying the print haters with a response?
Let me be very clear as to my meaning: I’m not suggesting that we ignore the false environmental claims about paper production or wave a white flag at the digital diehards.
Far from it.
I do believe that we as an industry need to stop letting ourselves get trapped in a defensive position. Instead of justifying our existence to the nay-sayers, we should be forging alliances with CMYK sympathizers. Most of my designer friends hold print dear to their hearts. They love creating in the physical world and making intimate connections through typography. These are the folks we should be courting because there’s already a bond between us.
Kill the marketing campaign mentality
Another theme Chris explores lies in the utility of pursuing a traditional campaign style marketing strategy. The old school advertising model focuses on distinct single serving promotions as opposed to cooking up a never ending feast. Chris suggests that this mentality creates a disconnect between brands and consistent messaging.
I’m inclined to agree as campaigns are by nature short term, meaning they’re not designed for the long haul. I’ll give you an example of what I mean from my experience here at PrintFirm. When I started here we ran lots of giveaways to increase brand awareness. These campaigns lasted about 2 weeks, and at first I used them as a way to entice new people on social media.
WRONG.
Yep, I can hardly believe I sat there wasting time trying to court contest junkies who could care less about print, design, and everything else that’s important to our brand. And as soon as the current contest ended, I’d watch those fair weather fans abandon ship.
Of course the abandonment issues shouldn’t come as a surprise seeing as how I sought these people out! I actively recruited lukewarm users on free contest listing sites and social feeds/pages. And why not? It’s a lot easier to win someone over with 250 brand spankin new business cards than to build a trusting relationship through several touches (small interactions).
What’s more I realized that these flakey people’s presence actually decreased the chances of a real fan winning the printed prizes! A couple of contest winners ended up being the hit it & quit it types, which really made me question my logic. So for our last contest back in February, I purposefully promoted to our fans alone, and didn’t bother trying to stimulate activity on 3rd party sites or blogs. As a result, a long time PrintFirm community member from Google Plus won the canvas.
I’m still going to run contests to reward you guys for being your awesome selves, but I changed my perspective to where I no longer see these events as stand alone campaigns. They’re simply part of keeping the tribe happy, and that’s my #1 priority as community manager.
Renewed commitment to the printing FREAKS
Speaking of priorities, I’ve realigned mine to put you inkheads first. That means no more posts filled with fun small business marketing ideas. I love local business, yet this blog doesn’t truly serve the small biz crowd. There are plenty of other business blogs much better than this one for those folks to read. From now on I’m sticking with sexy print design examples, case studies from our creative clients, and technical design tutorials to inspire and hopefully educate you.
PRINT FREAKS UNITE!