MStique Marketing... Reaching Women One At A Time

What The Tweet?

Every where I go these days (marketing groups that is) is seems the topic of Twitter comes up. To Tweet or not to Tweet is the question. I believe Twitter has many great communication uses in radio. And I think that when used properly, it can be a great way to keep radio out in front of the thousands of conflicting messages your listeners get everyday.

But unlike many technology advances, Twitter is not the favorite "new shiny object" of the younger listener. It is the geeky guys, the early adopters that are all a Twitter right now. So if you're a talk station, I'd be all over Twitter. As a female targeted station, right now... I'd put my efforts else where such as a dominating and active presence on Facebook.

This is a great read. Enjoy!
Who Is Really Twittering?

Five Tips To Make Facebook Contagious

To Facebook or not, I’ve had that conversation over and over again the past few weeks. My answer is definitely, but do it right! Just since September, the number of women on Facebook has increased by over 165% (Pew Research study). And over 45% of all Facebook users are now over the age of 26. Kids are not happy that mom has taken over Facebook. No more beer bong photos from college. Women prefer talking to their friends on Facebook over sharing emails. So Facebook can be a great connection tool for you and the best part, it’s free. It just requires some time and thought.

 Tip One: Facebook is a female conversation tool. But the key to that is it is a conversation. If your radio station is going to get involved on Facebook, you need to have your personalities creating conversations. It is not just another place to post your latest positioning statement. My friend Paul Poteet from WZPL in Indianapolis does the best job of this I’ve seen. He has a running dialogue with listeners all day. And most of the time, it’s very funny.

 Tip Two: A recent study by Participatory Marketing Network shows the top reasons people join a fan page are:

• Getting news or product updates  (67%)

• Having access to promotions (64%)

• Viewing or downloading music or videos (41%)

• Submitting opinions (36%)

• Connecting with other fans (33%)

It’s all about new and exclusive content. They want to stay connected to you so give them a reason to check in.

Tip Three: Facebook is the new water cooler. People at work use Facebook as that little break-time fun. So make sure you are giving them something fun. Funny comments by an air personality, a fun video, funny photos, a way to win something only on Facebook, stay engaging so your listeners connect with you.

Tip Four: Facebook is not just another place to repurpose your website material. But it is a great way to drive website traffic. In other words, don’t just copy and paste your website material onto your Facebook page. But, do use it as a way to announce new additions or points of interest on your webpage with a link. For example, one of my clients found some great old photos from artists visiting the station in the 80s. They posted a couple on their Facebook page with some fun comments by the morning show, but included a link back to the website to see the whole photo album.

Tip Five: Get creative. The people who are on Facebook are active. A study by Netpop found the typical social network user addresses 110 people per week on average. Become part of that conversation. It is really easy to create apps, design fun Facebook events and start Notes about your city or station. Facebook is interactive, it makes people feel connected. But you have to create things to get listeners to participate.

 I recently had a conversation with a client who said she wasn’t sure how Facebook created listening. And my answer is, it doesn’t. Not directly. Facebook is just one more tool you can use to make your station part of your listeners’ community. We have to get out of the mindset of looking at marketing as always directly correlating to listening. Promotion does that. Just like Coke putting a display up by the cash register at the grocery, appointment listening contests create direct tune in. That is promotion and it’s very important.

 But we also have to remember that as a radio station, you have a brand to build. You have to become part of your listener’s community to really succeed long-term. Don’t stop promoting, but that is not the same as developing a brand marketing strategy. Promotion and marketing are not the same. They do different things. You need both to win.

 Visit MStique Marketing’s Contagious Connections to see how you can develop your brand for long term success! And if you’d like help  managing your Facebook strategy, give us a call. We’ll be glad to do a Facebook teleconference to make sure your efforts are Contagious!

 

Dear Rush, I Understand You're Having Trouble With Women

I heard yesterday on the news that Rush Limbaugh was thinking about having a summit to figure out why women don’t like him. My first thought was WOW… how do I get invited to that! And then my marketing mind went to work and after looking at Rush’s conundrum through the marketing to women filter, I thought a quick note might be just as effective. Besides, I don’t believe he really wants to hear what I have to say anyway… and that is part of the problem.

 Dear Rush:

 The news yesterday was all over the fact that you were trying to figure out why about two thirds of the women in this country don’t like you and that you were thinking about having a summit to try and figure out why. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m really trying to watch my budget these days, so I thought instead of wasting all that time and money on a summit, I’d just give you a clue. And I have three for you.

 The first is, you are unauthentic. Women see through that like you were a pair of sheer panty hose. People who are successful with the woman audience are genuine and true to their beliefs. The most successful women broadcaster in history is Oprah. And why do we love her? Because she’s authentic. She’s fat, she’s thin and she shares her struggle. She was abused, fought through the glass ceiling, had sexist bosses, has problems with love… and she shares it all. When she makes a mistake, she owns it right away. When you admitted after the 2006 elections that you were carrying water (I believe those were your words) for people you didn’t believe in, you lost any credibility you had. Listening to you, you cannot possibly believe the stuff you say everyday. And right now, our lives are too important to get caught up in your drama and points to “create excitement.” We want solutions, not finger pointing.

 The second point, you are the bully on the playground we all avoided. Women prefer solutions, to name calling. Consensus to “it’s us against them.” We hate being told we’re stupid if we don’t agree. We are the peacemakers of our families and have no time for those who only want to stand on the sideline and call people names. When you said you wanted our President to fail, that was the last straw for every woman I know, Democrat or Republican. You see, if the President fails, we all fail. We worry about having enough money to retire, to put our children through college and taking care of our parents when they get old. Failure is not an option. Women thrive on positive thinking and knowing that if we all work together, that is how we win. We teach it to our children everyday, so we don’t need you trying to scare us into believing in whatever message you’re trying to sell that day.

 And thirdly, I really don’t think you even like women. And I am pretty sure that if you want women to listen to you, calling us names like Femi-Nazi isn’t a really good plan. You see, I was born on the cusp of the real change in women’s rights. I was a freshman in high school when Title 9 was passed. Not that my school paid too much attention, but at least we had real sports teams and got to play against other schools. We only had one set of uniforms so the basketball team and the gymnastics team couldn’t have a game on the same night. And the boys got box lunches for road games and we had to stop at McDonalds and buy our own dinner, but most of the time, things were pretty even.

 I even got my first radio job because of EEOC requirements. I got to do the all night show at WMEE in Fort Wayne Indiana for $100 a week because they had to have a woman on the air, and I just happened to walk into the program director’s office on the right day. I fought for equality in pay and eventually, made as much as the guy who was there before me. I had to fight off the advances of the men I worked with, listen to their sexist remarks and even have promotions built around double entendre jokes like “Go To Bed With Diane.” Boy did that make my parents proud. But I survived it and made a path so the women who came after me had a much more equal path.

 It’s still not equal but it’s sure a lot better than it was. And it was because of the Femi-Nazis that some young woman now can walk into a radio station, get a job and not have to deal with the same discrimination I did.

 So, perhaps, and it’s just my gut feeling, but if you want to appeal to women, understand our struggle. Understand that even today, the pay gap between men and women is still too large. That we’re concerned about how our children are educated and if they have health insurance, and that our bodies are our private property and only we should decide what happens to us. Walk a few steps in our shoes, and then maybe you might understand why we really don’t identify with what you’re saying on the radio.

But I tell that to any broadcaster who is trying to appeal to women. Be authentic, make sure that what you’re talking about rings true in a woman’s world, and most of all, understand our concerns are big picture. Women are the caretakers of the family. We have to manage the big picture. And if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. And right now, from where I sit, you’re part of the problem.

 Best regards and I hope this solves your confusion. But my guess is nothing will change, because you’re not authentic in really wanting it to change. It’s just another stunt, which takes me back to the first paragraph. And thus the circle continues.

Diane

 

Whatcha' Talking About?

What makes viral marketing work? It is the ability to create an event or offer that makes people want to participate and then tell their friends. They become your spokesman. And peer to peer marketing is by far the most effective form of marketing for women there is. Women trust their friends and family over any outside message by more than a 3 to 1 margin. That is where the community building aspect of WOM works. 

 I remember during the Presidential campaign, laughing at the pundits who were making fun of the Obama campaign for getting people to sign up for a text message or email when he announced his VP choice. The pundits were all focusing on why would anyone really care, and what a gimmick it was…. yada yada yada. They completely missed the point of the value of the WOM (word of mouth) that simple idea created. But most importantly, they missed the real reason for the text and email announcement which was... the Obama campaign gathered over 150,000 email and cell phone numbers from that event. They easily and with no cost, captured the names and contact information of a huge number of supporters. Supporters who later in the campaign received tons of information and ideas to help their candidate. It was brilliant and almost free.

 Right now, Advantage… the flea and tick protection medicine for your dog and cat has a great campaign going on. It’s called Help Your Pet Get To The Vet. They have a website and a full page ad in USToday that focuses on their message of even in hard times your pet still needs to go to the vet, and Advantage would like to help. All you have to do is go to the website and sign up (www.gettothevet.com ). Each hour they give away 80 vouchers for $20 off your next veterinarian visit. You must sign-up with your name, contact info, the name of your pet and it’s age… before you find out if that hour’s 80 vouchers are still available. They have 13,000 vouchers to give way, but it is almost certain they will collect three times that many names with all of the personal and pet information they need for future direct marketing campaigns. And since I signed up and got my voucher… I have put the link on a couple of animal welfare Facebook groups and told a couple of my friends with dogs. Word of mouth at it’s best.

 What can you do to get people talking about your station? What can you offer advertisers that uses the power of radio to create a campaign that puts targeted consumers in touch with select advertisers? In these times, we need to get creative. And that is what MStique Marketing’s Contagious Connections is all about. We create campaigns that make your brand contagious. To find out more, visit us online at www.mstiquemarketing.com or call us at 888-707-4441. Getting contagious is the key to surviving in tough marketing times. 

The Picture Does Matter

Sometimes technology grabs our attention and we tend to forget about some of the tested and other powerful means of marketing. But when it comes to sending a concise message to a targeted group of people, direct mail is still a hands down winner. With an approximate open rate of around 80% (DMA studies), the ability to highly target mailing lists and direct mail’s ability to drive consumers to do many different things, direct mail is still a huge bang for your marketing dollar. It is not only measurable but it’s also interactive. When creating a marketing campaign for a client, I will almost always choose direct mail over television. I see the benefits outweigh other traditional media in campaign after campaign.

 But a new study from Creating Results shows that to get great results from direct mail, good design is important. By a margin of 2 to 1, adults gravitate to ads and direct mail that have one, vibrant image as opposed to a collage or series of photos. People with expressive faces beat out more sublime faces and bright colors trumped cool colors. And the older the consumer, the more they preferred to be able to identify the person in the photo.

 Women also preferred to see more lifestyle photos instead of product photos.

 When breaking down a direct mail campaign, the targeted mailing list is by far the most important component to any strategy. But the second is design and keeping the results of this study in mind as you decide on a concept will help insure that your investment gets opened.

 

MStique Marketing's Diane Shannon and Mary Wilkinson have over 30 years of successful direct mail experience between them. Direct mail is a powerful tool and can be used to drive cume, create loyalty and increase sampling. To find out more, call Diane at MStique Marketing at 888-707-4441 or visit us online at 

www.mstiquemarketing.com.

 

 

 

 

Breaking the Cycle of One Way Conversations

For many years, radio was a one way conversation. As a teenager, I remember hanging on every word from Brother Bill Gable at CKLW and John Records Landecker at WLS. They talked and I listened. There was no interaction and they had no idea who I was.

 Now… fast forward technology 30 years. There is no excuse for radio to still be a one way conversation. Oh, certainly we talk to listeners and use them for phone calls. But seriously, how many of you are really creating a conversation with your listeners and connecting on a one on one level?

 A media study by Bivings Group of newspapers in 2008 showed that 58 percent had some form of user-generated content on their websites. That includes user-generated photos, homegrown video and actual op-ed or articles. And 75% of newspapers encourage dialogue among readers via comments about stories. This is how newspaper will survive. Online content and user conversations.

 Add into the mix Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites and you have millions of people all publishing their own content. So how are you interacting with your listeners? Are you becoming part of the conversation or just sitting on the sidelines? If you want them to talk about you… you have to become part of the conversation.

 In a search of about 50 radio websites, I found very little in the way of listener generated content. A few stations had photos sent by listeners but most websites are little more than a billboard of station events and contest information…. with some banner ads for clients thrown in.  It is all one way… station to listener. And almost no conversation or interactivity between station and listener to be found.

 To make yourself contagious… to have the connections that really stick, think of all of your resources and how you can make them more interactive. About 35% of adults are currently on Facebook or another social network and it is growing faster every day. So they understand communication and they like the connection. Blogging is also an easy way to create a two way interaction that allows a sharing of ideas and experiences. Encourage your listeners to send photos, videos and offer them a way to talk back to you. Make the connection with you contagious! It only requires a little effort and almost no money and you will be pleasantly surprised at the marketing benefits!

 

Contagious Connections is a marketing system created by MStique Marketing to help clients make their marketing contagious and more effective in a time of tight marketing resources. Get the most for your marketing dollar by becoming Contagious. To find out more about Contagious Connections, visit MStique online at 

MStique Marketing For Women

 

 

 

The Holidays Can Be Fun... REALLY!

Here come the holidays. When I talk to PDs and Marketing Directors about Christmas, they usually grumble. Too much Christmas music, vacation schedules to be covered and oh those darn client promotions. But I think Christmas can be the best time of the year to connect with your listeners. Call me crazy, but I love Christmas on the radio. Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree makes me smile every time I hear it.

 And I think this year especially can be an awesome time to create a real difference for you and your listeners. The Marketing To Moms Coalition’s most recent survey showed that moms are worried. They are worried about the economy and they are worried about the future. Here’s your chance to use the Law of Attraction and create a radio station that is positive and brings the feeling of community back into the holiday.

 So, let’s shake up that snow globe and dream about the most connected Christmas yet! Here are some of my favorite ideas to turn your station into an uplifting, fun and attractive place to spend the holidays. Remember, it is all about connecting!

 •An ongoing theme right now is giving back to the community. One of the most inspiring and well attended gift fairs I’ve been to is the Gifts For A Cause fair. Invite local non-profits to create gift certificates for things that will help their cause and create gifts that mean something. For example, the food bank sold certificates that provided a holiday dinner for a family of four or baby food for a month, the animal shelter sold certificates that provided cat food for a month to a shelter cat or a week’s worth of food for a litter of puppies. This type of fair can be done as an event or on your website and it is full of good will. It is the perfect feel good gift and the connection level is huge.

• The Buy of the Day. Cash is tight for everyone and retailers are looking for any idea that will bring in traffic. Create a gift Buy of the Day on your website. It is a great way to steal newspaper money and will provide an insider bonus for your listeners.

• Send out your own Secret Santa. Have Santa show up to pay someone’s bill at the grocery, their purchase at the gas station, put money in peoples parking meters, bring cookies to listeners at work, show up at office holiday parties and ring the bell for the Salvation Army. Make your Secret Santa visible everywhere doing something nice for the community.

• This year, make your 12 Days of Christmas all about helping with the stress of the holidays. Include things like a clean house for Christmas, a personal chef for a week, someone to wrap all of your gifts and a girlfriends Christmas party at the spa. Find ways to make your listener’s say “aha”.

• Food.  We all love it and the holidays are a time to share it. Create a board on your website where people can share their favorite cookie recipes. Pick out a few people and invite them in to share them on the air with the morning show. Cookie swaps are huge connectors, trust me on this one.

• The Shopping Elf. Create a place on your website for listeners to share great website for deals and a place for local small business people (who are also listeners) to share their unique gift ideas. Women love to share their finds and you will be surprised how many local people make great stuff. Once again, they are connecting through you!

This is a great time to bring your listeners together, let them connect and help create a mood that makes your station attractive. Be the place people want to hang out because it is fun and positive. Do what Sirius and XM can’t do, what an iPod can’t do, reflect back what your listeners need right now and you will become part of the connection. Create word of mouth because you are touching them in ways only local radio can do. It’s one of the intangibles that makes radio what it is! And the there is no better time than the holidays to make it work for you.

 

 

Using Word of Mouth to Increase Your Piece of the Pie

Capturing women’s attention in marketing a product has many factors, but the most important is trust. Women buy from those they trust, they ask their trusted network for information before making a purchase and listen to other women who they can identify with for their opinions. Social networking for women is huge, because it is another line of communication to learn and share.

 Savvy marketers get that. P&G has a whole area on their website for women to share information about P&G products, get coupons and read about relatable items. But the company that has my attention today is VocalPoint. They connect women to new products by sharing experiences with the products through the eyes of other women. That is, women sample the product, then share their views and experience via a newsletter. So how could that work for radio?

 I think most car dealers’ radio commercials are horrible. They really do nothing to bring women into the show room. But what if you went to the Ford dealer and pitched the idea of giving a group of women listeners a new Ford Flex for the day. They could drive it, pick up their kids, see how roomy it is, talk about the better gas mileage and then go out for the night on the town. All the time carrying a little video camera recording their exploits. You then use the experience to create a radio spot, video on your website and video on the dealers’ website. It’s word of mouth, women talking to women about a great new product. The trust factor is there. That’s what VocalPoint did and it has been huge for Ford. 

 By developing a group within your database of women who are active consumers, you can then use that group to create word of mouth opportunities for your advertisers that not only will help them create better advertising campaigns but will also help you stand out from the competition, getting bigger pieces of the pie. By using the radio as a portal to your audience, you can then help create word of mouth campaigns for your clients that not only include radio, but also website and email campaigns. It’s not just value added, it’s really marrying all the technology together to create a real word of mouth strategy. And in today’s economic world, creative will win.

 Women love to learn about new products. It is their nature to share what they’ve learned with their friends and family. That is how the trust is built. And by using that trust, radio can become the conduit between advertisers and listeners, selling access and creating word of mouth that is much more effective than a screaming car dealer voice yelling at me about $49 down. If you’d like to learn more about how to begin to create word of mouth with your advertisers and listeners, give us a call. It's tough out there and new perspectives can help. 

 

 

 

Building Communities... The Ultimate Target Audience

Just What is a “Community” and Why is it Important in Marketing?

 It’s the old philosophy of birds of a feather flock together. Or in 2008 terms, birds of a feather usually have a common interest that you can isolate and market your product to. That is, communities are people with like interests or beliefs, a common goal or a common need who form an informal group or “community”. Some communities are organized such as a women’s book club or entrepreneur group, but most are not. Most communities are just groups sharing a common interest such as a yoga class, women who try to help each other with after school sports practice juggling or breast cancer survivors who meet for coffee once a month. They may not seem like a group at all.  The community can be made up of something as simple as people in the same stage of a life group like mothers’ with elementary school age children or women who are just starting a business.

But in fact, they are a community of people that all have a common interest and a common need. Thus they make a great marketing target group.

 Community building is becoming so important in marketing that many universities are now offering classes and even degrees in community building. Online social networking sites need effective managers and consumer products needs marketers who can really get under the skin of their targeted consumers. Thus community marketing has exploded. Marketing to the mass audience is becoming less and less effective. The marketing gurus of tomorrow are graduating with an understanding of how to reach many, small groups with a personalized message crafted just for that group. They are using less broadcast and more social networking sites, less outdoor and more WOM, less print and more viral email. The message becomes more targeted, more relevant and thus more effective.

 A recent study by the Society for New Communications Research showed the greatest values of participating in communities:

Increasing word of mouth about your product                  35%

Increasing brand awareness                                             28%

Bringing new ideas into an organization faster                  24%

Increasing customer loyalty                                             24%

 

This is an area of marketing that radio seems to be made for. Radio offers many ways to bring community members together and can benefit from the good that involvement and loyalty from community members can bring. But, because of the newness or the “out of the box” thinking required to get the process started, radio is lagging far behind other industries in using communities and word of mouth marketing to create long-term, tangible results.

 If you’d like more information on how your radio station can identify communities within your listener base, build new communities that can help build long term loyalty and how using word of mouth can not only create listening, but revenue too… call MStique Marketing at 888-707-4414. Make your marketing sticky, make it WOM worthy. 

What We Can Learn From MasterCard

 

Setting the Mood

 “I’m really tired of bad news. Every time I turn on the news, that’s all I hear.”

 “The whole world needs a valium right now.”

 “I’m tired of old white guys telling me what they are going to do for me.”

 The question? When you think about your future over the next few years, how do you feel about life in general?

 Just some answers from a MStique Pulse survey for a client. These answers match some other national surveys we’ve seen that show that women are really tired of bad news and want to make some changes to help create change. Without getting political, how do you take advantage of that mood? By being the oasis in a sea of bad news.

 MasterCard gets it. Their latest promotion involves a cruise for you and 9 of your girlfriends. Priceless.

 The Spa industry gets it. Look at the resort spas in your area and see how many are offering girlfriend getaways, self-help getaways and relaxation training.

 Wyndham Hotels gets it. They’ve created a travel planning service called Women on Their Way, to help women plan great girlfriend getaways.

 State Farm gets it. They are running an ad campaign in women’s magazines focusing on how they can make insurance easier so you can get back to “me” time.

All of those examples are great marketing strategies for making today’s woman want to be part of your brand. They are either building connections or they are trying to make women’s lives easier. Both are very successful ways to create a “that’s me” moment. And it’s the “that’s me” moment that will help your station create a relationship with your listener.

 Let’s look at building connections. Women connect with other women. I just recently saw a poll that showed that women trust their friends more than anyone else, including their husbands. (And remember, 50% of women are not married.) There are no more important relationships in a woman’s world than her friends. And that is an easy connection to use to help you become part of their world. My friend Suzanne Belanger, the marketing director for WVMV in Detroit used to do an unbelievable promotion in the 90’s at Q95. The Cruise For Women Only was a huge event. They would fill a boat for the night with just women and their friends, cruise the river with music, food and some beverages. It was a hot ticket and an event that created unbelievable word of mouth. Believe me, what happened on that boat did not stay on that boat!

 Creating those kinds of connections is not difficult. Women only events whether they are fun, like The Cruise For Women Only, or business or health oriented all have great attendance. I recently saw a hotel do a women only slumber party with special rates for a group of four, dinner, spa treatments, wine tasting and a networking cocktail party. Women’s business networking groups are growing all over the country. Women and wine, Chick Flick movie nights, travel opportunities or lunchtime networking, they all can give you the opportunity to facilitate another women connecting with women event. And you will reap the benefits of being part of that good mood.

 The other technique for creating mood is by doing things that help women relax. With the holidays approaching (yes I said the Christmas word) you have unlimited opportunities to create ways to make the most stressful time in any woman’s life easier. Once again I’ll use one of the best marketers to women as an example, MasterCard. (Since 80% of all purchasing is done by women, they know their customer.) At Christmas, they always create a Priceless campaign with a grand prize that includes some way to make the holidays easier. For a couple of years they did a personal shopper including the cost of the gifts. I can still see the woman watching someone else trim her tree, wrap her gifts for her while saying “great eggnog” as she gleefully watched. MasterCard is very strong at creating campaigns with an emotional connection. Priceless is a great campaign. 

 So as you go into the last half of the year, think about the mood you are projecting. Are you attracting women to your station by making them feel good? Word of mouth is created by appealing to a woman’s senses, by creating a “that’s me” moment. Mood is not just a contest, it is a strategy, a language and a color pallet for your station. Mood is what creates connection. 

If you'd like more information on how MStique Marketing for Women can create a winning mood for your radio station, visit us online at www.mstiquemarketing.com.