Welcome to Community Week on {grow} as we feature thought-provoking, original thinking from our community members. First up is  Jamie Lee Wallace, who helped me with an outstanding ROI and measurement blog series last summer …

Your business’ survival depends on your ability to build, retain, and convert an audience. Sounds simple, but the marketplace is full of distractions and prospects can be a fickle bunch.

Today’s lesson comes straight from the streets. Not the mean streets of B2B Marketing, but the cobbled streets around Boston’s Faneuil Hall where I watched a couple pros demonstrate how to get the job done in under twenty minutes.  David and Tobin are street performers and they hustle. They have to capture the attention moving targets, turn them into fans, and get them to open their wallets.

Watch and learn, people.

Step 1: Build Your Inner Circle

Before the show started, the guys made a big deal setting up their “stage” (a red rope on the ground), and arranging all their props. The minute anyone got curious and paused, David or Tobin would engage them in light banter. No big sell, no big deal – just an acknowledgment, a smile, or a quick joke. Sometimes, they’d ask the passerby to lend a hand, thus making them part of the team, or “Inner Circle.” Nine times out of ten, these people stuck around for the show.

Lesson: Don’t wait until the curtain’s about to go up. Engage your audience immediately. Build your Inner Circle. These are the people who will be your first audience members.

Step 2: Create Excitement

Once the stage was set, the guys started warming up in earnest with a few flips. The fast movement caught the eye of a few more passersby, but they usually kept walking. Here’s where that Inner Circle came into play. The guys asked those of us who were lingering to “step right up.” They drew us in tight and close. No longer just a bunch of scattered individuals, we were now a cohesive group – an audience. Now they had us make some noise. David and Toby instructed us, in a conspiratorial whisper, to whoop and holler when they announced the beginning of the show. They were completely transparent about this, saying, “If you make a lot of noise, everyone will think something really exciting is about to happen, and they’ll all come running.”

Lesson: Use your Inner Circle to build a bigger audience through social proof, word-of-mouth, and testimonials. Be clear about wanting their help and make it easy for them to step up.

Step 3: Make the Audience Part of the Show

Audience rapport is critical to conversion. An audience is just a bunch of onlookers until you make them part of the experience. David and Tobin did this by “letting us in on the joke,” pulling people from the audience to assist or even be a “star,” and keeping their banter very personal and “localized.” They weren’t tossing out canned jokes, they were riffing on what was happening in the moment with the people who were in the audience.

Lesson: Create an interaction that is genuine, personal, and relevant. Don’t be afraid to let people participate. Build trust by listening closely and adapting based on what you hear.

Step 4: Ask for the Sale

You’ve created an audience and turned them into fans, now – and only now – can you ask for the sale. David and Tobin asked for our support while balanced some forty feet up in the air on a ladder that was held steady by four audience volunteers. They explained that street performing is how they make their living. They asked if we’d had a good time and what we thought the show was worth. They joked about how they’d never gotten a $20 tip before. Without pulling out the guilt card (too much), they presented their bid for compensation. Then they added the “dare” with the $20 comment. I gave them $10 – the most I’ve ever given a street performer.

Lesson: It pays to ask, and once you’ve established a good rapport, it’s much easier to make your case and get the results you want.

Bonus Tips

David and Tobin’s act leveraged two other important, Big Idea tactics: offering entertainment and giving it away for free. As Mark has said, people want to be entertained . (Granted, street performing is entertainment, but you get the idea.) The giving-it-away strategy is explained well in David Meerman Scott’s book, World Wide Rave. Sometimes, to make money, you have to put stuff out there with no strings attached.

So, there you have it. Four simple steps to build, retain, and convert your audience. Do you leverage any of these strategies in your marketing? What could you do more of?

This post was inspired by David Graham and Tobin Renwick of the “acro-juggling” act, “The Flash.” You can catch them doing their acrobatic-juggling-comedy thing from Nevada to Scotland to Australia.

Jamie Lee Wallace provides full-service and DIY marketing solutions to entrepreneurs, start-ups, and creative types. Visit her at www.SuddenlyMarketing.com.

Illustration: Acro juggling

I have one of the world’s best points of brand differentiation — I’m the only business blogger you know old enough to have a daughter-blogger! Lauren is entering her senior year as a journalism major and has been having some intriguing social media experiences. When she told me the following story I was frankly a little weirded-out.   Let’s see what you think about using Facebook as an investigation tool after reading my daughter’s guest post …

Since my last post on {grow}, I’m a year older, I’ve aced all my classes, started my own blog and developed a fondness for coconut ice cream.  Hope you have all been doing well.

But my hiatus is beside the point. Today I am here to tell you a story of intrigue and revelation … a story that might forever change the way you think about Facebook.

This summer I’m spending my time as a development intern for a private, non-profit foundation. One day I was asked to research a professional sports player — who was associated with my foundation — as a potential target for donations. Through public information, a little resourcefulness and my best pal Facebook, you may be amazed at what I found …

The hunt begins

To protect the innocent, we’ll call the professional sports player Dijon Shmoogley.  Fundraising is a sophisticated process and my large nonprofit foundation subscribes to many lists, archives and search engines to determine who might have a “potential to give” (i.e.: who’s got property, boats, salary, stock,  etc.) After exhausting my search through these traditional databases, I reached a dead-end. I found no indication of Dijon’s financial status.

Turning to the Internet, I learned that:

• His brother’s name was Reginald, and he also had played sports in college.
• His mother and father, Sarah and Frank Shmoogley live in Minneapolis.
• Dijon was newly-married to a girl name Jenny Smith from Minneapolis, MN
• His Facebook page is private.

Although I could not pin-down Dijon’s financial status, once I found that he was recently married I immediately began to look for his wife’s assets (isn’t that a vow … “I promise to share my boat, stock portfolio, antique china…”?) as an indication of his economic status.

Facebook takes over

Turning to my best pal …

1. I searched Facebook for “Jenny Smith”… Ha!  2,000 entries.
2. I searched Facebook for Reginald, Dijon’s brother. Found him. His Facebook isn’t set to completely private so I can view his friends (Thinking that he would be friends with his sister-in-law). He isn’t friends with any “Jenny Smith” but he is friends with his mom, Sarah Shmoogley who, in her Facebook picture, is next to a blushing bride … I just found a picture of Jenny Smith!
3. I returned to the search for “Jenny Smith” and quickly find a matching picture of my bride. I opened her profile and it confirmed that her hometown and current city is Minneapolis.

I then went to the online site for the Hennepin County Assessor’s Office (Minneapolis) to search for properties owned by Jenny Smith. (THIS IS COMPLETELY PUBLIC! Go see for yourself!)

There are about 20 Jenny Smiths in Hennepin County who own property, but 16 are registered with spouses who aren’t Dijon Shmoogley. I search the remaining four properties on Google maps and rule out at least three of them for various intuitive reasons. Finally I get down to one rational possibility. But it is a shared homeownership with another woman — Amelia Bedelia.

Hmmm… If the two women are close enough to buy a house together, wouldn’t they be Facebook friends too? I go back to Jenny Smith’s Facebook page and sure enough there’s Amelia Bedelia. I have now confirmed Dijon’s home and am on my way to discovering a significant portion of his net worth.

Game.  Set.  Match.

Even with a name as common as Smith and Facebook’s security settings, I was able to confirm Dijon’s home ownership, value of the home, and other valuable information about the assets of the couple. Social media status updates also can provide other important clues — discussions of vacations at the lake house, promotions, investments and purchases. With this information, I tailored an appropriate fundraising approach and suggested giving level for the Schmoogley Family.

Another fundraising friend of mine grabbed a list of over a thousand new potential donors because a competing charity posted the names of their 1,500 largest donors on a Facebook event page.

I admit this is all a little weird but it’s real and it’s time to wake up. Facebook is not just about social networking. It’s also about social investigating.

Are you feeling a little nervous about this?

Lauren Schaefer is the world’s greatest daughter and will be looking for a job in about six months. I can vouch for her.

I think I figured out why nearly every social media blogger sounds exactly the same – commonly referred to as the “echo chamber.”  I’m learning that copying and pasting can be profitable.

To unpack my point, allow me a brief explanation of content marketing.**  One hot concept is using statistical methods to determine optimal ”keywords” that, when used strategically in your content, result in “inbound leads.” In plain English this means embedding words about hot social media topics in your blog to snare sales prospects.  People are charging for webinars on this topic so I’ll save you a few dollars/euros/dinero by providing the theory in a nutshell:

• Conduct research into the “keywords” that are leading people to your, or your competitor’s, website.
• Seed these keywords liberally and systematically into strategic places like blog headlines to fool the search engines into thinking you are the premier destination for those search terms.
• Employ “outposts” like Twitter and other social platforms to become vessels for your keywords and links.
• Attract backlinks from places also laden with keywords.
• Focus your content plan, headlines, tweetstream, etc., precisely on these key words.
• Rinse.  Repeat as needed.

So within this theory, original content is secondary and it’s not really about marketing either.  You identify hot topics and then engineer your content to perform a precise and technical function. The ultimate goal in this new age of content engineering is not necessarily to engage, inform or entertain. It’s to pump up your search engine results.

Let’s get back to the echo chamber.  One of the master purveyors of content engineering (my term, not his) is a guy named Lee Odden. He’s pretty much the Elvis of SEO and has done some outstanding work in this field.  I don’t know Lee but I read most of his posts because I think it’s important to keep on top of the latest tactics in this arena. Here is his advice from last week:

Social conversations influence search behaviors and if you can identify relevant concepts that are emerging in popularity on the social web, why not create and optimize content around those topics so you’re easily found via search engines?

So the big idea here is to simply copy what everyone else is doing and ride the wave of sameness to SEO glory. This may explain why my blog reader sounds like there’s a scratch in the record.

I have mixed feelings about this. I can’t deny there is a certain ruthless beauty about using statistical analysis to turn your content into those tentacled robots that tunneled through the rock and chased everybody on the Matrix movies.  I’m a capitalist pig-dog and the idea of using data to annihilate your competition appeals to me.

But I also have a soul and I’m in love with the idea of building an audience through content that is profound, beautiful and entertaining.  I think it’s possible to fight through the clutter, engage a meaningful audience and realize business benefits without pre-determining my subject matter through a statistical analysis.

On the other hand, the whole keyword thing seems a lot easier! : )

I’m really interested in your ideas on this important and fascinating trend. Will content engineering kill the soul of blogging or finally drive the measurable results effective business people demand?

** It was correctly pointed out by community member Jeremy Victor that this sentence reads as if  I am fully describing the discipline of content marketing. I was not attempting to do that, I was only exploring this one “keyword engineering” aspect.  Jeremy provides a more thorough explanation of content marketing in his comment on this post. Rather than re-write the original article I decided to address my insufficient description with this annotation. Thanks for keeping me honest, Jeremy.

These “suggested bids” reflect what advertisers have most recently paid to reach a demographic group based on CPMs (cost per 1,000 impressions) or CPCs (cost for every time a user clicks on an ad).

Some trends make sense — older (and richer) users are more expensive to reach than younger ones, for example.

But there are some counter-intuitive trends, too.  Japanese users are less expensive to advertise to than Russian users, even though the Asian country’s GDP per capita is more than three times as large.

The recession has culled the weak from the pack but it’s likely that your competition is still fierce.  Is there a way to attract and retain B2B customers without lowering your price? And is there a way to leverage the social web to keep your customers … even in the extreme case of a commodity market?

Holding onto customers in a buyer’s market is one of the most extraordinary challenges in business, especially if you’re selling a commodity (Commodity = purchasers view suppliers as identical on all factors but price, i.e. common coal, steel, or chemicals).

There is usually only one winner in a commodity market — the lowest cost supplier — except in periods of high demand when supply falls short.  But there are ways to lock-in customers even in ugly downturns.  One strategy I used throughout my career was to create a systematic plan to raise switching costs. By this I mean create obstacles — through valuable benefits — to prevent a customer from leaving you for the competition.

A process to retain customers

This process starts with getting out to your most valued customers and listening. And I mean REALLY listening. We would sometimes have half-day sessions to explore un-met and under-served customer needs that would …

• Improve their competitive position
• Enhance profitability or productivity
• Eliminate waste
• Lower risk
• Increase speed to market

One strategy that uncovered potential points of differentiation was to ask customers what they hated about their job. This always seemed to get people to open up about an idea we could implement to make their life easier!   Some other potential approaches to this challenge:

• Solve a customer problem (reporting, data-gathering, analysis/testing) that might add slightly to your cost, but establishes enough value to create a hurdle to switching
• Create a specialized service that would be difficult for competitors to match (we did a specialized truck-return recycling program, for example)
• Work actively with customers to influence specifications and terms that could advantage my company or disadvantage a competitor
• Focus retention efforts on most profitable customer locations
• Look at eCommerce integration options to enhance retention

Notice that all of these ideas go beyond the basics of price, quality and service. Those aren’t strategic initiatives. Those are competitive tablestakes these days.

When customers don’t play nice

This process of listening, reacting and renewal must be continual and integrated through an effective CRM system. But it doesn’t always work.

In the middle of all this great creative marketing work I just suggested is another dynamic. Purchasing may not want you to implement your ideas – even if there is an advantage – because it reduces their flexibility with suppliers.  They may even force you to hand over your innovations to competitors. I witnessed this in the automotive market in the 1990s.  This ended up hurting customers because when there is no reward for innovation, innovation ends.

Now what about the social web?

Is it possible to develop some distinct value through social media that could create a switching cost? My answer – probably not. The social web might be a tool to listen and tune-in to possible innovations and market needs but I don’t see how social networks can create sustainable switching costs in this part of the sales cycle. It’s free to everyone and easily duplicated by competitors.

However, I do think you can create PRIVATE information networks and communities that create distinct value. For example, one idea that worked really well was a private, unique market information hub for customers who remained in our top tier in revenue.

What are you doing to hold onto your best customers in tough economic conditions?  Can you think of any way to leverage the social web for DISTINCT value in a commodity market?

With many companies now engaged in social media marketing strategies for nearly two years or more, success stories are starting to emerge, even in the difficult marketing world of industrial B2B.  I discovered a great success story to share with you through a masters thesis being developed by Haakon Jenson of Norway.

The case exemplifies an integrated approach to CRM, customer research, SEO, web design, content development, and social media marketing that I think you’ll enjoy!

BACKGROUND

ShipServ is a leading e-marketplace in the maritime industry providing a portfolio of software, services and hosted applications designed to enable efficient global shipping.   Their core product TradeNet, an e-commerce platform connecting industry buyers and suppliers. Currently ShipServ serves 150 shipping companies managing 5,000 ships and approximately 30,000 suppliers. In 2008 the company turned to the social web to help them through several marketing challenges:

• Image of being an impersonal software company.
• Limited marketing budget and employee resources
• Increase awareness of using eCommerce as a shipping solution — a big change for traditional customers
• Customer base not early technology adopters. A survey showed 65% regarded the social web as a “distracting waste of time”

OBJECTIVES OF THE MARKETING PROGRAM

• Drive 50% more traffic to website in three months
• Raise awareness of brand throughout global shipping industry
• Attract new sales leads through relevant content
• Change focus from “shouting” at customers to “listening, engaging and inspiring”

STRATEGY

The company began with research to find out where customers were receiving their information, their participation in the social web, information needs and the current “state of the conversation” for the ShipServ brand. Key discoveries included that there were very few online communities for their industry and that the mention of their brand was rare. Despite the fact that their historical customer base largely did not use the social web, they saw an opportunity to seize the lead and become a thought leader in their marketplace.

ShipServ partnered with an outside marketing firm and their CRM vendor to create an integrated social media plan that focused on leading the creation of an online community, developing outstanding content and using social media channels to drive new sales leads through their website.

ACTIONS

> Conducted research to determine customer information needs and keyword themes.

> Revamped website to be more customer and content driven — New design was more easy-going and personal. Developed custom landing pages for groups of keywords used to find the company and specific calls to action based on individual customer needs.

> Created a blog that frequently featured their customers. They also used the blog as a way to establish conversations in the industry.

> Established “scorecard” through their CRM system to track lead nurturing progress. All reactions and visitor behavior was examined for possible sales leads.

> Developed quarterly content plan based on themes established from research. Content was leveraged and re-purposed in various ways across all the social media sites.

> Promoted original content through variety of social media channels, which were used as “beacons” to drive traffic back to the main website. These channels included:blog, e-newsletter, Twitter, light-hearted videos, podcasts, Facebook and LinkedIn.

> A series of valuable white papers (like 10 Essentials of Online Marketing in the Shipping Industry) were created and promoted through the social channels, website and newsletter, resulting in 1,000 downloads in seven months.

> Established online industry community by creating a group on LinkedIn. The company introduced this forum to both shipping company suppliers and procurement professionals and had 863 members as of last week.  Content for the community was developed based on the initial research of user needs and included research, surveys, and of course content re-purposed from other sources.

> Search engine optimization campaign, including keyword content planning.

RESULTS

Website

• Website visitors increased by 59 %
• Pageviews increased by 70 %
• Average time on site increased by 25 %
• Generated over 1,000 downloads of a white paper

Community

• 378 members in the ShipServ Maritime Network group on LinkedIn
• 300 visitors to the blog
• Over 600 views of the company videos
• LinkedIn and Twitter have gone from zero to the top 20 traffic sources

Business statistics

• Increased contact-to-lead (landing page contact) conversion by 150%
• Increased lead-to-opportunity conversion by 50%
• Decreased campaign management costs by 80%
• Increased the number of sales-ready leads by 400%
• Measurable increase in brand awareness

Break-even on the $30,000 social marketing media investment was achieved in three months. The company estimated the results they achieved would have cost $150,000 through traditional media.

What are your thoughts on ShipServ’s project?

If you market to governments and governmental agencies, a new social media directory may be extremely useful to your efforts.

Microsoft just launched a site called Gov2Social, a directory that aims to list state-by-state for the social media participation for elected officials, state government agencies, cities, towns and counties.

The project is counting on users to input their government’s social media participation.  It currently has about 500 entries so it’s usefulness is pretty limited at the moment but keep an eye on it if you market and sell to governments.

When the website is populated, it will be possible to sort and analyze top government social media users by city and state.  Microsoft also plans to add add podcasts, analytics, case studies and best practices.

Twenty seconds.

That’s about the amount of time you have to grab a visitor’s attention on your website. To keep them there, you better have something great to say and it better be quick!  There are four messages you need to deliver in those precious moments that will determine whether somebody is a sales lead or a passerby:

1) Graphic impact. Everything you do (and don’t do!) communicates about your brand. So before they read a single word, the graphic impact of your site is already going to leave a big impression. How does the look and feel of your site contribute to the story of your brand? Is it buttoned up? Is it bold? Is it inviting?

2) The big deal. So the graphic impact has held their attention long enough for them to begin to read.  Way to go! The first thing you need to say to your visitor, powerfully and succinctly, is “I am different.”  Why should the reader go to the next sentence?  Tell them!   Are you the biggest, boldest, newest, safest, most innovative, best value, most experienced, wisest, or the most colorful?  What are you, and why should they spend their time here rather than going back to play Farmville?

3) The unmet needs. Now let’s get very specific.  Next you need to tell them how you serve them uniquely. What needs do you meet?  This is different than explaining what you “sell.”  Customers don’t buy what you sell. They buy what they need and want. Explain what problems you solve for them. For example, every caterer delivers delicious food. But what customers really WANT is a worry-free, memorable occasion that won’t break the bank.

4) What next? OK, you have their attention ever so briefly. Now give them a reason to stay on your site to learn more.  This is commonly known as the call to action. Ask them to call, respond, or register. Offer them a free white paper, menu, trial offer, consultation, podcast, eBook.  Ask them to view your portfolio, blog, testimonies, case studies. Create another touch point between you and this sales lead. Don’t let them go quite yet!

And really, that’s it. There’s not much more you can do in 20 seconds to give yourself a shot at creating a sales lead out of a visitor. I’m sure you have your own ideas, too. Please leave a comment with your own ideas, problems and questions!

On a webinar last week, I briefly covered an idea I call the information eco-system (or social footprint) and received a lot of questions about it.  This is a critical concept for businesses today so I thought I should expand on the idea.

If you did a web search for you or your company three years ago, the result would have been a list of websites.  If you conducted the same search today, you may get LinkedIn profiles, YouTube videos, Slideshare presentations, maps, perhaps even tweets from Twitter.  In fact, as the social web has emerged, visits to traditional websites have declined dramatically for many companies.

The implication is that if you have a website and think that’s all you need any more, you’re not understanding the social web.

People have the opportunity to find you (and your competitors) in lots of places now and you should have a systematic, mindful strategy to populate this information eco-system with content that will support your business objectives … and hopefully drive people back to your website. Put your information out there where the people are. Then give them a reason to go back to learn more at your website.

Let me give you a dramatic example of this in action. Recently I posted a slide deck on SlideShare for the convenience of my college students.  I went back to the site an hour later to make sure the slides had uploaded properly and 251 people had already viewed the deck.  None of them were my students, since they didn’t know about it yet!   Those 251 visitors to my deck were vitally interested in a presentation called Social Media 101 and were high potential contacts for me, right?  I added a slide at the end directing people to visit my website, blog, follow me on Twitter, etc.

Another little example: I recently gave a talk to economic development leaders and asked them what they would get if they googled their cities.  If the answer is YouTube videos of drunken conventioneers, they better get out there and populate the social web with videos that tell their story THEIR way.  If you don’t systematically populate the web with your story, you’re abdicating the brand management for your organization.

So, create and own the social footprint of your brand everywhere you possibly can … or at least to the extent that your resources can support.

Does this make sense?  What ideas do you have about this concept?

Planning on using the social web to market to B2B decision-makers?  According to just-released research from London’s Base One Group, you might consider the age of your target audience.

In a comprehensive study of 503 UK B2B purchasing decision-makers, those under 30 years of age were twice as likely to be fans of the social web and use it actively as an information-gathering tool.

The report does a nice job breaking out the information channels used by B2B decision makers by demographics and industry, but also by the stage in the decision-making process.

For example, decision-makers under 30 counted on blogs, Twitter and Facebook at the exploratory stage of a supplier search about 30% of the time compared to about 6% for those over 30 years of age.  The one exception was LinkedIn, where both age groups found equal utility.

Important implication of this –  the upcoming generation of professionals is relying heavily on new media as an information gathering tool.

Blogs rule?

Another thought-provoking nugget in the study, is that when B2B procurement decision-makers were finding potential new suppliers, Twitter and blogs were considered as a more influential source of supplier information than any other information channel, including word of mouth, seminars and industry publications.

However, the most popular sources of information across all ages remains decidedly “old school:” web searches, supplier websites, seminars, and the industrial press.  

In fact, when asked how their information gathering behavior had changed, procurement professionals cited the greatest increased use of web searches (up for  64% of respondents) and supplier websites (up for 61%). Social networking sites Facebook and Twitter experienced 6% and 10% net increases respectively, and LinkedIn saw growth of 19%. Online videos/webinars/podcasts were also a strong source of information with an increase in usage of 36%, consistent with other B2B research that has been featured on {grow}.

Base One Group commissioned the new research in association with B2B Marketing Magazine.  The study had a diverse industry profile including manufacturing, business services, financial, public administration and healthcare. About 50% of the respondents had 1,000 employees or more.

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