My favorite holiday story is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I’ve read the original a few times, and at least once aloud to my kids. In fact my kids grew up on various productions of the tale.

So Many Wonderful Versions

We started with Disney’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol, which I still rather enjoy, and moved on to Jim Henson’s A Muppet Christmas Carol, which is actually quite true to the original story despite its humorous embellishments. I find that my enjoyment of the numerous variants is based partly on how well they capture the spirit of the original, if not the actual action and dialogue.

George C. Scott’s rendition is excellent and includes the scene where a remorseful Scrooge sees a beautiful daughter that could have been his. It’s a powerful scene that’s left out of many renditions.

Also remarkable is Patrick Stewart’s version which includes another favorite but often neglected scene. The Spirit of Christmas Present takes Scrooge on a whirlwind tour of a poor mining village, a lone lighthouse keeper, a ship at sea, and elsewhere to show him how the spirit of the holiday comforts, uplifts, and unites those who otherwise would be desolate. It baffles me why this beautiful and poignant scene would be omitted from an adaptation.

Some Less Traditional

I also enjoy some less traditional interpretations that remain true to the spirit. Henry Winkler’s An American Christmas Carol is surprisingly good. Bill Murray’s Scrooged is clever and touching though the slapstick comedy may bother some. And Albert Finney is wonderful in Scrooge, a musical both dark and wondrous.

What It’s About

I’m not sure exactly why I am so enduringly drawn to A Christmas Carol. Perhaps it‘s because the story is one of reclamation, a fresh start, sins and errors wiped clean. Perhaps it is because Dickens captures some of my core beliefs about balance between the workplace and the people, customers as well as employees, upon which businesses depend.

When Scrooge is confused by the terrible fate his partner Jacob Marley endures after his death (doomed to walk the earth as a spirit shackled in chains), Scrooge says to him, “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob”.

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

The Awesome Responsibility

Dickens goes on to recount the power, and thus awesome responsibility, held by those who manage others. Brought by The Spirit of Christmas Past, Scrooge witnesses a joyous holiday party he attended as a young man. It was the annual tradition of Fezziwig, his employer at the time, to throw the gala for his friends and employees. After the festivities the Spirit, questions the praise that the young Scrooge heaps upon Fezziwig, “He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?”

“It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter self — “it isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks, in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ‘em up; what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

And that’s the nut of it. We all have the power to enrich the lives of everyone we touch – our peers, our staff, our customers – or alternatively to make them more difficult. Use your power wisely. Bless you all. Happy holidays.

Photo

Jim Poulos, Melissa Rain Anderson, Kevin Ligon, Kara Lindsay, and Ned Noyes in the 2010 Geva Theatre Center production of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Courtesy: huthphotography.com

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Pitching

To be most effective, a professional baseball pitcher won’t pitch the same way to every batter. Prior to a game a pitcher and his catcher study the strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies of the opposing players. They develop a customized approach for each batter designed to increase the likelihood of getting him out

How they actually pitch to a batter will also depend what’s going on in the game at the time – whether there are base runners, how many outs there are, and so on. In other words, they combine statistical knowledge with situational awareness to maximize each interaction with the batter.

You should do the same when you make a pitch to your online customers. Combine the knowledge you’ve accumulated about a customer along with your tracking of their online interactions to customize offers and maximize each experience with you whether on your website, through a marketing email, or in the call center.

Fielding

A ballplayer needs quickness, agility, and a good glove hand to reach a hit ball and field it cleanly. He then has to decide what to with the ball and do it with speed and accuracy. At times, what to do is obvious – catching a pop fly when there are two outs. At other times it’s more complicated – after a diving stop of a one-out grounder with runners on first and third.

Additionally, his teammates must read and react to the situation the same way – the pitcher immediately runs to cover first base when a grounder up the line pulls the first baseman away from the bag. Much of a team’s fielding practice consists of running through various situations so that coordinated responses become routine.

Likewise, when your company fields leads through its online channel it should respond to them quickly having already developed the required process. As with a hit ball, the response is likely a coordinated effort involving multiple players from different disciplines – the online marketer hands the leads off to the outbound sales desk which documents the results for the analytics team.

Hitting

Imagine standing in the batter’s box while a pitch coming straight for your head at 95 mph curves over the plate for a strike. It not only takes vision, timing and strength to hit in the big leagues, it takes nerve. None of that comes to much, though if your hit is caught. In the words of Willie Keeler, a lifetime .345 hitter, “Keep your eye clear, and hit ‘em where they ain’t”.

Hitters have to counter the natural tendency to look at the fielders and hit where they look. Instead they have to focus on the opportunities; target and hit to open space – which is sometimes on the other side of the outfield wall.

Similarly, you need to focus your Internet marketing on your target prospects. Then swing for the fences by avoiding the commonplace. Aim to delight your target audience with Websites interfaces that surprise even as they inform. Engage your Facebook followers with postings and contests that encourage participation. Carefully segment your email subscribers and hit them with imaginative messages and offers that they welcome.

Does your company’s Internet marketing round the bases? Do you bring other skills from the national pastime to your efforts? Let me know by commenting below.

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A. Analysis

While it may seem obvious, you’d be surprised how many web analytics department churn out and dump data on their business partners without accompanying interpretation and analysis. A well-established analytics area will help the business develop key performance indicators, unearth trends and explain variances. They will independently anticipate, research and answer business questions that the data generate.

Does your web analytics team only provide you with spreadsheets and canned reports or do they assist you to understand how your online presence is impacting your business?

B. Business

Gone are the days where web metrics could be reasonably reported upon in an vacuum. Businesses need to know more than unique visitors counts and email open rates.

Do leads generated through email marketing close at higher rates than those generated from the outbound call center? Do website sales have a higher return rate than stores sales? Does service provided through online chat create higher levels of customer satisfaction? Is it more efficient?

Now that their online presence is integral to their business, companies need the answers to questions like these. They need their business data to be combined with their web metrics to really understand the efficacy of their online capabilities and the value of their eBusiness investments.

C. Cloud

In the past, to make use of web analytics it was necessary to provide your own technology infrastructure, – essentially servers and their support. No longer. Data analytics vendors now offer compelling cloud-based solutions that not only lower your total costs with scalable and highly-available services, they offer powerful analytical tools that are accessible from any device and location.

You owe it to yourself to at least look into some of these newer services to see if the can save your company money while making it more efficient.

Okay. Pencils down. How does your company do on the ABCs? Are you doing well or do you need to go back to school? Let me know by commenting below.

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Their abilities are a result of talent and training. Hours and years of intense practice, devotion, and depravation. But there’s more to it. It takes intense focus and a strong belief that it can be done. Belief that they themselves can do it.

Do You Believe?

There are the slight errors and balance checks that gymnasts suffer when they lose focus. There’s also the dramatic unravelling that occurs when they lose belief in themselves. Lack of focus undermines training, causes errors, and can bring on a crisis of confidence.

The best consistently approach the beam with strength, agility, unwavering belief and intense focus. They make it look easy.

So It Should Be With your Marketing Campaigns

Successful campaigns also have intense focus. Intense focus on message, design, timing, intended audience, business goal, and result.

The best marketers are able to combine these elements into a campaign that has its own beauty and grace. A campaign that, though complex in its construction, seems natural and engaging to the audience, easy yet powerful to the business. A campaign that sticks the landing with measurable business results.

Do your campaigns stick the landing?

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Practice begets precision. Coaching begets synchronization. But what about the no-look passes? The over-shoulder set to an unseen partner? The diving dig to the one place where success could be had; where her partner will be? What begets that?

Trust

We’re not talking about blind trust – a kind of faith based more on hope than knowledge. These teammates know each other intimately. They know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, habits and tendencies, moods and quirks. Each knows when they can depend on the other, and when the other will depend on them.

They possess a trust forged through shared experience. Through tough challenges as well as easy wins. Failures as well as successes. They have a knowing trust.

So It Should Be With Your Marketing Relationships

Customers favor businesses they know and trust, businesses they can count on to be there, businesses that say what the will do and do what they say.

Base your marketing campaigns on knowledge of your customers. Make your privacy policies readily available and easy to understand. Ensure that email subscribers confirm their subscriptions. Inspire customer advocacy.

Do your customers know how you will treat them? Can they trust you?

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We never imagined the incredible strength it takes to perform on the gymnastic rings. Strength, flexibility, gymnastic prowess, and strength. Yes, I mentioned strength twice.

But in a competition where every gymnast can accurately perform the iron cross, a back kip to a handstand, and a backuprise planche, what distinguishes the best from the rest?

Stillness

When the top gymnasts hold the strength elements for the required two seconds, the rings don’t move. They don’t swing. They don’t even quiver. (In fact the apparatus used to be commonly called the still rings.)

The very best do this with calm, quiet countenances. Nary a grimace will betray the enormous effort required. The very best eliminate all distracting noise from the grace and power of their routines. Nothing detracts from the beauty of each element.

So it should be with your marketing Designs

Each marketing piece, whether a web page, a brochure, or an email, should have and intended audience a primary objective relevant to that audience, and a design that focuses attention on that objective. Don’t distract me with competing headlines, or draw my eye with extraneous movement. Don’t compete for my attention with misplaced graphics and excessive calls to action.

Do your marketing pieces have beauty, strength, and focus? Or do they grimace?

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Not So Fast

There’s one other element, perhaps the most important one – cadence. A good hurdler will run faster and jump ever more cleanly within a pattern that works for her. The same number of steps between each hurdle. The launch foot in the same place relative to each hurdle. Repetition refined. Deviation invites disaster.

The best hurdlers go further. They feel the rhythm of the race. They dance the course. They apply art to process.

So It Should Be With Your Marketing Communications

Beyond inviting subject lines and relevant content, cadence is key. Communicate with me too frequently and I’ll tune you out. Not frequently enough and you’re not on my mind.

How do you know the right cadence? Just like a hurdler you have to practice, measure, and refine. And also like a hurdler who needs different cadences for the 100 meter and 400 meter hurdles, you likely need different cadences for different segments of your audience.

Do you feel the rhythm?

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Aboard Han Solo’s famous ship, The Millennium Falcon, R2-D2 is on the verge of besting Chewbacca in a board game when C-3P0 delivers the advice: “Let the Wookie win.” Though the droid possesses superior intelligence, the larger, more menacing, and decidedly shaggier Wookie has game-deciding power.

If you adhere to the lessons revealed in the movie Star Wars: A New Hope, you need not follow 3P0’s advice when it comes to marketing in the daunting social media space.

“Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope”

With her back against the wall after Imperial forces invade the Rebel Alliance ship, Princess Leia records this simple phrase into R2-D2 shortly before the droid makes his escape to Tatooine. Her message captivates Luke Skywalker so much that it sets him on his search for Obi-Wan and his journey to become a Jedi Knight.

Like Princess Leia, the key to social media marketing is not just finding your audience with the right message but engaging them such that they will participate in your quest. Rather than one-way communications like TV commercials (which seem from a time long ago and far, far away…), social media allows for games, contests, polls and discussions that can engage and captivate your audience. Don’t settle for simple informational ads.

“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for”

By employing the “Jedi mind trick,” Obi-Wan easily persuades a storm trooper to cease his interrogation and let Luke pass by an Empire checkpoint. While you may not have the power of the Force behind your social media marketing, you can deploy the principles of persuasive design in your ads, on your website, and in other material intended to motivate your audience.

Reciprocity, scarcity, authority, commitment, likeability, and social proof are among the persuasive design principles you should employ to add force your social media marketing efforts.

“He doesn’t like you…I don’t like you either!”

Something about Luke’s presence in Tatooine’s Cantina bothers the pig-nosed man and his alien friend to the point where they let the young Jedi know. While it’s unclear what they don’t particularly like about Luke, there are measures you can take to make sure your social media presence doesn’t put you on the bad side of people who “have the death sentence on twelve systems.”

For example, statistics show that Facebook users are put off by a hard sell in what is essentially a social context. Don’t be the guy trying to sell life insurance at the dinner party. Always work to engage your audience within the accepted norms of whatever social medium you are using or risk sticking out and becoming unwanted.

“Stay on target, stay on target…”

In the movie’s final conflict, Rebel starships speed across the Death Star to their carefully chosen target, the thermal exhaust port. Photon torpedoes loaded, the pilots remain focused on their mission, despite mounting Imperial resistance.

Similarly, you should set specific targets for your social media marketing, stay focused on achieving them, and measure their effectiveness with any of a variety of emerging tools designed for that purpose. Strive to measure engagement, such as how many comments you status updates generate, rather than simply counting your “Likes” or followers.

“Use the Force, Luke”

At the deciding moment and at the prompting of Obi-Wan, Luke is able to tap into the Force, a greater collective consciousness that heightens his abilities and effectiveness, to win the day.

As with the Force, companies can go over to the dark side with their social media messages – obscure truths, hide fine print, or ultimately fail to genuinely connect with their audience. These folks are quickly exposed and excoriated on social sites.  A similar fate befalls those who attempt to hide from, obscure, or cover up service issues.

Using the Force of social media involves more than employing ethical business, however. It entails creating authenticity and legitimacy in your message, sharing ideas and insights, and revealing the personality of your business in ways that engage customers and prospects.

DKNYPRGirl has generated an enormous Twitter following by posting insider information on fashion to women who wish to know more about style trends and DKNY’s inner workings. By successfully engaging its audience, the company has created a forceful social-media personality.

And so . . .

By learning the lessons of Star Wars: A New Hope, you can create your own game-deciding power as social-media marketers. And perhaps you won’t have to let the Wookie win.

Do you have a favorite scene in A New Hope that teaches a social media lesson? Let me know in a comment below.

Image courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

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Boomers Move Over

By now it’s old news, the first Baby Boomers hit the age of 65 last year and 3.5 million more will do so each of the next twenty years. Sure, they’re not all going to retire immediately upon hitting that milestone, many voice the intent to work past age 65, but many will and others will leave the labor market before reaching it.

In any case, Baby Boomers – defined as those born between 1946 and 1964 – will represent a declining percentage of the workforce going forward, dropping from just under 40% now.

Who will take their places? Why Generations X and Y, of course. Gen X – born between 1965 and 1979 – are already closing fast making up some 36% of the workforce.

So going forward it will be increasingly likely that those who configure and place orders with your company will be from Generations X and Y. Why does that matter?

Its All About Interaction Preferences

Baby Boomers, like the Traditionalist generation before them, are most comfortable with phone and face-to-face interactions, leveraging personal relationships to gain information and transact.

By comparison, Gen X and Gen Y are comfortable using the Internet to perform research and shop. They, too, leverage relationships to gain information, but are more likely than Boomers to do that online through social networking sites and customer reviews.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 80% of Gen Xers go online to research and purchase products while 72% do so to configure and book travel reservations and 67% do their banking online.

Clearly, this is a generation that is not only comfortable in the world of online information repositories, configurators and order entry systems, but one with high expectations that those capabilities will be available online for their use.

Are You Ready?

Gen X and Gen Y prefer the immediacy, flexibility, and convenience of online interactions where intuitive interfaces and round-the-clock access allows them to conduct business on their own terms.

Does that describe your company’s offerings? If not, you may already be losing business to firms with superior online capabilities for prospects and customers. You surely will in the future.

That doesn’t mean that you need to abandon proven processes that work today with your loyal customers. But you may need to compliment those with well-crafted online tools to attract new customers tomorrow, and maybe even to retain some existing ones. Designed appropriately, these new tools could be used by your internal staff as well, making their jobs easier and replacing aging tools that are increasingly difficult to use and expensive to maintain.

Help Is Available

Fortunately, a decade of web-technology advancements means that you can bring these capabilities to market now in ways that are much more efficient and cost effective than you could have in the past.

As an early entrant you would have had to build and host your own systems, a proposition that is not only costly but does not guarantee success.

Today you can likely choose from any number of providers who specialize in offering highly configurable systems to meet your needs as well as those of many others. These vendors will often host the systems as well, helping you contain server and servicing costs as well.

A third-party eBusiness consultant, one who understands the market but doesn’t sell his own packaged web systems, could help you assess your company’s needs, evaluate options, and develop an appropriate action plan.

Summing It Up

• A growing percentage of the orders for your products and services will be placed by Gen X and Gen Y going forward
• More comfortable working online than the Boomers, Generations X and Y have greater expectations about the information, configuration, and ordering capability you offer through the web
• Its likely that you can use third-party experts with proven solutions to make up ground quickly

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Recently, a friend who owns and runs a successful B2B company lamented to me, “I know I’m way behind online, especially when it comes to using social media for my company. I’m afraid I missed the boat.”

This sentiment is frequently expressed to me by owners of smaller B2B companies. They’re flat out making their businesses work through the use of proven business processes. There’s little impetus and less time to investigate untested marketing approaches. Yet the nagging hype about social-media marketing penetrates their overbooked schedules and causes angst.

If you are one of these small-business stalwarts, take heart. You haven’t missed anything. The fun is just beginning. Here are a few thoughts to consider as you stand on the dock waiting for embarkation.

Are Your Customers Looking For You There?

Chances are, they’re not. They, too, are flat out. They, too, are relying on proven business processes including those that connect them to their suppliers (and you).

If they are B2C, however, they are probably trying or planning to try social media to engage their own customers. Success there will eventually lead to different expectations of an online relationship with you.

B2B Marketers Are in Unchartered Waters

Sure, B2B marketers have convinced their larger B2B clients to experiment with social media. And depending how you measure ROI, they can point to successes. But those successes don’t regularly translate into more business for the B2B companies themselves. The reality is, it’s notoriously hard to convert Facebook likes to customers, or tie a large Twitter following to sales. Almost no one is doing it.

On the upside, the efforts of B2B marketers are leading to greater understanding, improved tools, and best practices that we can all eventually utilize.

The Currents Keep Shifting

Complicating the efforts of B2B marketers, the considered set of social-media sites keeps changing as does the features available on each. While Pinterest is a natural venue for companies with visual products, who envisioned using it a year ago? It wasn’t worth creating a presence on Google+ until Google recently changed its search algorithm to include it. How many companies have had to rethink their Facebook presence now that Facebook converted to the timeline view?

Then again, an order is slowly emerging. Users seem reticent to abandon sites where they’ve contributed substantial content and formed communities even as they readily adopt sites that offer new capabilities. If viable, those new sites are often gobbled up by the more established – witness Facebook buying Instagram.

Should B2B Companies set Sail?

The answer depends on the nature of your company, your customers and your intended goals for using social media. If you have the desire and the resources you can use social media today to promote your brand and thought leadership. Its not so easy to use it to generate leads, however. You can learn more about what’s viable by reading 4 Business Uses for Social Media.

In any case its advisable for you to:

• Relax – you haven’t missed the boat
• Stick your toe in water – don’t get talked into foolhardy ventures, but a few well-conceived experiments will help you understand what works for you
• Stay tuned – there’s a lot more to come and the fun is just beginning

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