The grim destiny of brands/companies we know so well is unavoidable, as their downfall has stemmed from a variety of areas (lack of innovation and reluctance to change applying to many of them).  But while many will fail, many more will survive and come out even stronger.  It all depends on what we do along the way — including some key strategies for surviving and thriving in today’s business.  Starting this week, we will highlight each one.

Part 1:  Adapt to the Changes.
Know your current and emerging customers — their needs may have changed because of the downturn. Your service offerings, messaging and brand experience may also need to change in order to properly connect with them.

A fine example of adapting to change is Home Depot’s current focus on catering more to the everyday homebody/do-it-yourselfer to offset the decrease in the stream of builders and contractors. Here’s a selected list of marketing/sales efforts they are implementing to energize their business, as covered by Mercury News.

1. Power Hours between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., Monday through Friday, when sales associates are placed at the end of each aisle to assist customers who shop during their lunch hour.
2. Ladies Night Out classes geared to women with a common interest. At the store located at The Plant in San Jose, for example, female customers buying expensive tile wanted lessons on installing it themselves.
3. Free Weekend Clinics for Kids on how to build age-appropriate toolboxes, planters, derby cars and other projects, materials included.
4. Do-It-Yourself Workshops where homeowners are taught how to repair screens, paint, install plumbing and other tasks usually done by pros.
5. A Garden Club customers can join for access to master gardeners, project ideas, coupons and a buying guide for anything related to gardening.

So, what are you doing to adapt to the changes?  Share them with us.

The shift towards social media today is huge. Numerous articles, case studies and statistics extol the myriad benefits of this powerful new marketing movement each day.  However, getting your feet wet in social media can be quite a challenge as social media is not just another medium or channel where traditional marketing messages can be pushed. Instead, it’s all about understanding the culture of participation. And then harnessing and incorporating that into all your marketing and business processes.
So, what is the best way for an organization to embrace social media?  Here’s some of our top-line suggestions:

1.  Set a goal. All marketing programs, from advertising to promotion, starts with a defined goal. The same is true for social media marketing. Some of the common SMM goals and uses are:

• Converse with your market:  Corporate voice community
• Build and reward loyalty:  Loyalty community
• Generate ideas: Innovation community
• Customer support: Peer support community
• Stimulate a passion: Enthusiasts community
• Build and maintain buzz: Events community
• Create excitement: User-generated content or contest

A note about virals: As much as you may desire a “viral-something” (video, site, email, etc.), please keep in mind that “viral is a result, not a goal/strategy”, as Scott Monty stated in his recent tweet.  Also keep in mind that something will only become viral if your prospect thinks it’s worth passing along to other like-minded individuals, and so on.

2.  Realize and accept that everyone now has a voice. This mean your employees and customers as well as your detractors.  Technologies collectively known as Web 2.0 have spread widely among consumers over the past five years and today, everyone has the potential to be a content creator. Social networking websites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, etc.) attract more than 120 million unique visitors per month and more than 82 million people in the US created content online last year.

Therefore, if you want to succeed in this new social world, you need to engage the people you want to reach by meeting them on their own turf, or by creating a turf that you make available for them (e.g., community).

3.  Don’t fall for ‘build-it-and–they-will-come’ syndrome. We have seen so many programs where a company focuses solely on a splashy design and tools and forgets to pre-populate their community with valuable content. We have also seen programs launched with promising content only to find out later that there are no updates as well as those without a proper marketing plan behind it to gain traction and visibility.  Please keep in mind that when a potential member comes to a community, the only way to have them join, share and return again is through fresh, compelling content.  Additionally, build out a support plan and schedule to promote your social media effort (e.g., SEM, SEO, social media seeding, PR, display ads, integrated into appropriate offline messages, etc.).

4.  Social Media is more than a campaign. It’s about having a holistic marketing program that includes leveraging social technologies over the long haul. It’s about socializing with your brand fans through commitment, integrity and honesty. At the end of the day, social media is about building relationships—this means you don’t just show up one day and then disappear when your campaign is over.   Just like in a real relationship, you have to treat social media users as you would treat the people in your life. Get to know them, interact without promoting and earn customer trust through transparency.

5.  Find the team to champion your SMM effort. Identify and enlist the right people in your company to spearhead the social media program. These people need to believe in the initiative and have the experience, energy and passion to engage others in the effort.  Additionally, choose a social media-marketing vendor to help you bring your goals to life and deploy the appropriate technology solution.  There are only handful of companies in the world with the right suite of in-house resources to effectively and efficiently support/operate a social media program.

The above is just a sample list taken from hundreds of suggestions. To find out more, feel free to contact us or explore some additional information on the following posts.

-  Ron Jone’s Social Media Marketing 101 – Part 1 and  Part 2
-  Adam Ostrow’s (Mashable) What are the Benefits of Social Media Marketing
-  The McKinsey Quarterly’s Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work

During a roundtable at our Fuel for Thought event, we discussed on a topic we often get asked by clients.

How can marketers incorporate the consumer’s point-of-view as a regular part of strategy sessions, extending beyond consumer-generated content, consumer-created advertising, corporate blogs and focus groups?

Being able to monitor, measure and implement consumer’s point of view has never been more important as the web is constantly opening up new avenues of conversation and new ways for consumers to voice their opinions on your brand.  There are various resources and tools available in the market (more on this later).  However before employing strategies, plans and applications, the first step is to commit to a long term brand initiative.

Strategy + Consumer Participation ≠ Success

Commitment + Strategy + Consumer Participation = Success

In other words, getting your consumer participation into your marketing and business strategy is not the silver bullet.  It’s the commitment you make as an organization to an honest open discussions, marketing efforts, measurements and integration over time that will deliver success.  This involves finding the right partners, monitoring conversations, measuring your buzz level, integrating offline/online efforts, properly setting website usability and conversion metrics, preparing your customer service and commitment to improve your initiatives beyond the test and launch stage.  Our good friend Adam Broitman has an excellent point-of-view on this.

Just like any relationship, an organizational commitment to honesty and perseverance fosters brand trust.  Wouldn’t you like to hear consumers say the same things about your brand?

I’m a firm believer that challenges open doors to opportunities, and opportunities bring innovation with possibilities to further advance and emerge as a leader – as many brands did during the Great Depression.

As eMarketer CEO/co-founder Geoff Ramsey puts it, “Consumers are still consuming.” They are still out there, looking for deals and recommendations to make product choices. They are relying on all available resources to find what is right for them. For marketers, the good news is there are more options than ever to make a connection with customers.

Below is a compendium to Geoff Ramsey’s presentation at the Fuel for Thought event in November. It’s based on his recent whitepaper Digital Marketing Now: Seven Strategies for Surviving the Downturn that is available for free at eMarketer.

That’s it for today.   I hope we sparked some new ideas and look forward to seeing your test programs in market.