We’ve been discussing how there are 2 strategic programmatic loops that clever marketeers run in tandem in order to ensure lasting consumer loyalty, devastating competitive attacks, and rapid attainment of your organization’s financial goals. These are the TAC Loop – corporate activity and messaging to ensure community creation around your brand and the OODA Loop – which creates a highly effective and strategic attack framework which enables you to rapidly outmaneuver your competitors. So what ties this all together? What we started talking about at the very beginning – Social Media!
Marketeers have been struggling since the introduction of blogs, wikis, VLogs, Podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, etc, how to use them effectively as part of a corporate marketing strategy. They question its efficacy in B-to-B marketing, they worry about the loss of control of their message, and all the other excuses you hear at the different conferences. They understand it in the context of consumer marketing – selling breakfast cereals, new video games, movies, soda, etc., but they simply don’t understand it’s place in the “serious” world of business to business marketing. If there is one simple concept that every B-to-B marketeer needs to understand is this: All marketing is consumer marketing. Period. No matter what products your organizations develops, you’re selling to a common entity – a consumer. Business consumers are motivated and influenced by the same tactics as when they’re purchasing personal products. This is exactly why social media has such power and is the fuel that keeps your OODA loop rotating with such speed and force.
So what’s a marketeer to do? How do you utilize social media as part of your Loop strategy? Content, content, and still more content. Content that’s fresh, that’s relevant, that’s entertaining. It doesn’t just have to be directly related to your products but about associated services, other products, partners, and if you’re feeling truly bold you could include negative reviews of your competitors. It could also be about social or leisure activities that other consumers of your products have in common – things like videos, personal financial advice, recipes if they cook, or special cultural events they enjoy. In addition to creating content internally, search other blogs or websites and link to them. Nothing helps drive SEO levels then link love! The key is that your content is relevant, fresh, and compelling to the community you’re looking to build. It also needs to be self-referential – each vehicle you employ needs to populate the next in your communication chain. Your blog feeds your podcast which in turn feeds your Twitter stream which in turn feeds your newsletters, which in turn feeds your website, and on and on and on. You create an integrated content stream fully re-enforcing your key messages and pulling your community together.
The goal is to turn your website – the most important element of your communication strategy – into a destination portal; the place to go for your community to get information on anything that is related to their interests and their careers. By providing content directly to your consumers along with the means for them to interact with it, you start both your loops spinning faster. The more time spent with your content – the less time they spend with your competitor and the greater the relationship they start forming with your company.
You position your organization everywhere your consumer is and provide multiple opportunities and multiple contexts for them to interact with you and your content. The more interaction the better. More importantly, you allow them the opportunity to tell you what they like and what they don’t like. If they like certain content over others, you can deliver to them exactly what they want. That’s the beauty of Social Media – it enables you to get immediate feedback – from direct commentary to usage/visiting metrics to direct focused response programs. It enables you to bring together a diverse group of consumers and turn them into a community better than any other method.
So how do you know it’s working? Besides the usual metrics of increased leads, PR coverage, and the return website visitors that all marketeers measure; the key metric is competitive impact. Imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery and the surest indication you’ve drawn blood. When your competitors begin to try and do what you’re doing, you know you’ve jumped ahead of them.
The key now is to not let up. You need to maintain the same level of intensity and commitment to content freshness as when you started the program. Once you start the loops spinning, you have to keep them in the air or risk looking ridiculous in the eyes of your audience. Remember – the OODA loop feeds your TAC loop. The TAC loop is all about Authenticity. If you’re not authentically going to embrace and execute with intent, you might as well never start. This is an all-in strategy – you either commit to it in full or just don’t start. In our next post, we’ll go through a case study on a highly effective loop campaign and how the combination of social media and video created highly measurable and lucrative results for one company and built a lasting community along the way!
David Appelbaum is an award-winning marketing professional and accomplished musician specializing in pre-IPO companies who is fascinated by the nexus between commerce, art, and psychology and how technology impacts them all.
