As a marketing consultant, I move between industries and get exposed to different voices. Looking at new marketing techniques through a ’sports marketing’ lens gives a different view of the world from an SEO point of view. This week, a couple of reports based on statistical rigour from companies like Forrester and ComScore have shown that the effect of social media might be less than first thought and that location based services are well and truly the bleeding edge of marketing.

My hunch is that had these reports been positive, then the self appointed Social Media gurus / experts / specialists / consultants would have been retweeting and digging and backslapping all round, but instead – relative silence.

The ComScore Report about online shopping behaviour shows that very few people consult social media or blogs in the first instance when buying a computer or consumer electronics. Instead - manufacturer sites and search engines are the driving force.

The Forrester report looks at location based services and the results shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone who lives outside of a metropolis like London or New York or Melbourne. Forrester finds that 96% of U.S. online adults have never used location-based mobile apps such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt and of those who do, 99%  don’t update these services more than once per week. In fact, only 16% of respondents have never heard of such apps, leaving the vast majority of Americans online still in the dark about location-based apps, which have had the marketing world obsessing over them in recent months.

Apart from the lack of utility that these services provide people, letting your location be known in real time to a large number of people quite a big behaviour change in societies where privacy is highly valued. Nevertheless, in some markets there may be a brand fit between the audience for location based services and a company’s target market. If you are looking to target men between the ages of 19 and 35 who have college degrees, then location based services might be an interesting test for a fraction of your marketing budget.

With all the hype, real numbers based on research and not hearsay get lost, especially when they don’t help the nascent social media ‘industry’ sell consulting.  The lesson, apart from sticking to the fundamentals and viewing new technology as one of many promotional tools, is to widen the voices you listen to.

Nevertheless, there are still many businesses who don’t prioritise the internet as a source of revenue, who have been conditioned to think that a company’s web presence is a job for the guy in IT or that agency that charges more than the lawyers.

This week I have seen headlines in traditional media with headlines like ‘Why you should consider Internet marketing’ as if it was still the bleeding edge of promotional activity – as if there was some reason why you might not do internet marketing.

Functions that are fundamental to business are still being marginalised internally and that provides technology companies that can explain the business benefits of their services an opportunity.

Take search. Even a 5 year old entrepreneur with a lemonade stand knows that location is important. If nobody knows where to find you, no-one can buy from you. Nowadays, even passing trade can be hijacked by competitors making real-time offers to tempt your customers down the street using location based services, but your customer’s journey probably started much earlier – with an internet search.

Why then, do savvy business people who understand that location is important, not think about the location of their website in a page of search results?

Perhaps it’s too hard. Perhaps the mystery built up by the ’search industry’ has convinced business owners that they are powerless to have an effect on the corporate machinery of sites like Google, bing and Yahoo!

Even if that is the case, why aren’t search experts then given the same priority as an accountant or lawyer?

In fact, it’s not the case that search is hard. While Google is not as transparent as the yellow pages, there are simple rules that have not changed for several years that almost anyone can follow to get the basics right.

Like accountancy or tax, there is a level of expertise that will meet basic requirements and then there are more complicated issues that require more expert knowledge to make the most of the system.

(It’s at this point that I feel like starting this blog again, having come up with the analogy between search and tax, but that will have to be another post!)

If you accept that location is a fundamental business requirement, then how you rank in search engines becomes a priority ahead of many other business functions. You page rank in relation to your key search terms or keywords needs to be a metric that has the same importance as your sales conversions or gross margin.

What if you could have a tool that did for search what MYOB or Sage does for accounting or what SalesForce does for CRM? What if you could do search engine optimisation (SEO) ‘the Google way’ in a step by step way that demystified the process but provided real business benefits?

What would you want from that service suite?

Probably the biggest difference between the sport of sailing and motorsport is the fundamental reason for doing it in the first place. While yacht racing exists primarily for its competitors to go sailing, motorsport exists to sell more cars. The phrase “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” comes from a belief that consumers are influenced by a brand’s involvement in the sport and it will influence the purchase decision.

Car manufacturers believe this mantra, even in series like F1, where the car being raced bears no resemblance to the vehicles in the dealer forecourt. On the other hand, it is extremely rare to see manufacturers of sail-boats involved at all in the sport of sailing.

While the idea that winning converts to sales is well accepted, it is extremely difficult to measure. Digital technology has made it easier to track conversion for products bought online, but for products like a car, bought at a dealership, the only way to really know what influenced the transaction is to ask the customer. This week, I heard such a story…

The Trofeo Abarth 500 GB is a one-make motor racing series in the UK featuring the Abarth 500. The series has the backing of the manufacturer, Abarth, which is part of the Fiat group. The race version of this car is almost identical to the one you can buy from your local Abarth dealer. There is a small, but extremely passionate community of people who love the Abarth brand.

As part of the marketing for the Trofeo series we reach out to fans and invite them to be VIP guests for the weekend. All they have to do in return is record their experience on a Flip video camera that we supply. We call it ‘Fan with a Cam‘. After the 2nd round of the championship at Silverstone, I was approached by a fan who had attended the event asking to buy hospitality tickets for his girlfriend. Instead, I offered him the chance to become our ‘Fan with a Cam’ for the latest round at Cadwell Park.

It turns out that the real Abarth fan was his girlfriend. Speaking to her over the weekend she revealed that she had wanted to buy an Abarth 500 for nearly a year, but upon watching them race at Silverstone, the home of the British Grand Prix, she left the racetrack with a single purpose – to buy one. And she did. Back at a different racetrack 4 weeks later she was the very proud owner of an Abarth 500. Not just a customer, but a fan.

The story is a nice reminder that marketing does not exist for its own sake. Interactions are not the same as transactions. ‘Follows’ and ‘Retweets’ and ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ are meaningless unless they convert into more sales.

Until recently, I had never heard of Abarth. The marque is part of the Fiat group which also includes Italian sports-car classic brands such as Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati and of course Ferrari. One of the reasons that the Trofeo Abarth 500 GB was created was to increase the awareness of the Abarth brand, but also to hopefully drive sales.

Here are some insights from the weekend.

1. Understand your audience.

I know. It’s fundamental right? But this simple piece of advice is overlooked time and time again, often by consultants trying to sell a technology or process that has no relevance to your stakeholders. Abarth had several audiences to relate to throughout the weekend including; motorcycle fans, professional motorcycle teams and riders and specialist motorcycle media.

Make no mistake, a car brand at a motorcycle event is risky. Bike people are a very close community, extremely brand loyal and passionate about their sport. Luckily, the Abarth brand has motorcycle credentials – the founder, Karl Abarth, starting his career as a motorcycle mechanic and racer. The Trofeo Abarth 500 GB event poster paid homage to this history and thousands of these posters were given away during the weekend to bike fans.

In the paddock, Abarth hosted a party with a live band and invited riders, mechanics, the media and volunteer track marshals to experience hospitality usually reserved for VIPs. For the cost of a beer, the brand bought great word-of-mouth that created ambassadors on forums and social media.

2. Simple is often the best.

While a lot of online buzz focusses on new marketing techniques like ’social media’, brand building is a much more broad discipline than just ‘clicks’ and ‘follows’ and ‘links’. The simple marketing tactic employed during the weekend to build awareness was to give away hundreds of flags. All around the Cadwell Park complex, children, and some grown adults, literally flew the flag for a brand that they had probably never encountered before. Not quite ambush marketing, but certainly the Abarth scorpion appeared in a lot of photos and even on live tv coverage.

3. Do your homework.

It would have been so easy to evangelise about how the 30,000 strong crowd could have got together on Foursquare, but when the venue isn’t even listed, then you realise that urban, high-tech marketing may not be the best way forwards.

Does it work? Yes it does. How do I know? I have proof. See my next blog about a case study that has big implications for sports sponsorship.

It got me thinking. Imagine this scenario:

You’re a website owner. You have a brand and products or services to sell. A bright young business development person gives you a call with an opportunity that goes like this:

Hi. I have a widget. I would like you to put my widget on your home page. The widget will have my branding and will link to a page on my site where your customers can interact with each other. You can add your logo on the page, but the users are mine and all data and content on the page also belong to me.

We will have no agreement between each other and I reserve the right to change the functionality of the page and how it integrates with the widget on your home page at any time. All this is totally free to you, but in return we get to collect information about your customers and advertise to them. You can advertise to them too, but you have to pay us.

We won’t compensate you for the real estate taken up by the widget and won’t pay you for any traffic that you deliver to our site.

Do we have a deal?

What would you say? Would your answer be based on sound commercial principles? Ordinarily, if someone pitched you an ‘opportunity’ like this, you would ask yourself – what’s in it for me?

Perhaps it is too abstract. Instead of thinking about the above example as a spam email from a web-company in China, think about it in the context of Facebook.Perhaps you’ve never thought about it in those terms. Maybe you have, but figure the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Getting people to visit your website is hard work. It takes investment in time and or money. Perhaps you spend money on television, radio or magazines to invite people to your website. Perhaps you invested in SEO to get good natural search results for your desired keywords. You may have bought your traffic via PPC or CPM based internet advertising, or you may be using social media tools like Digg and YouTube and Twitter to lure people onto your pages – the pages where you hope to make your money – the pages where your customers make transactions.

Do you know how much it costs to get each of your web visitors to your page? If you did, you might be less likely to let those people leave your site for free.

While your interactions might happen on Facebook, your transactions happen on your website. Therefore you should think carefully before giving Facebook (and other social networks) free real-estate on your site that could be generating you money.

There are some exceptions – allowing new customers to log-in with Facebook credentials could make it easier for them to transact with your business.

There is also nothing wrong with allowing customers to keep in touch once they have completed their transaction. If customers do ‘like’ you on Facebook then you can establish a relationship with them that lasts after they have left your site and reduce the cost of acquisition for return visits.

Next time you invite someone to follow you on Twitter or like you on Facebook think about what you are gaining and what you are giving up.

I was reminded of this time yesterday as I tried to explain the virtues of Twitter to a ‘man in the street’.

I like Twitter. It appeals to parts of my personality, but as anyone who has tried to show someone else the platform will know – Twitter is not something that comes easily to most people. Unlike Facebook, which connects you to to long lost friends, Twitter has no immediate payback for most people.

There are huge barriers to entry that involve strange geeky etiquette around following and following back. To interact you need to learn a new set of text commands like putting @ in front of a username or # in front of a hastily thought up tag that might be one of several for a particular event. The Twitter site doesn’t actually give you much functionality so you have to make a choice between a set of online tools like Brizzly or downloadable apps like Twhirl. And all this for an activity that doesn’t scale because the human brain can’t follow 4765 conversations, so 90% of the stuff you want to listen to is lost because you have to sleep or you only scroll down the last 50 tweets or so.

While the self-appointed gurus try to sell interaction and conversation, the benefits of Twitter for most people don’t even require an account. You can search Twitter and follow trends and breaking stories using something like TweetGrid or even an RSS feed and changes to Google and Bing will return Twitter results. It’s hard to track conversational threads and many Tweets link back to blogs that have the ability to comment in more than 140 characters.

In other words, there will be a lot more consumers of Twitter than users. Think about it, there are a lot more people who see Google Ads than place them.

So what does that mean for businesses and brands?

While Twitter is becoming increasingly important as a way of influencing a certain type of customer, most of your customers have never heard of it and almost all of them don’t use it. An increasing number will consume your Tweets or ‘Follow’ you, and a small amount will use the reply mechanism. The best that you can hope for is to be engaging. Engagement is not the same as interaction. Those you interact with will be a tiny proportion of your customer base, but how you interact with them is extremely important.

In other words, you need to understand your audience. You need to know who they are, where they are and how they would prefer to communicate with you. If you want to be engaging you need to be relevant. If you are lucky enough to be invited into a customer’s digital life, then it is probably because you have done some old fashioned brand building or got your product right. The fundamentals will work across any platform – including Twitter.

It seems to be a formula that people consume easily though, so here are my 5 reasons why your business should not be using social media.

1. Because it’s new and cool.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there making social media pitches based purely on fashion. There’s a buzz out there. It’s new and improved. If you don’t have it, you are missing out. Every couple of years, something comes along that changes the way people behave. Just because something is covered by the media, does not mean that real people are using it as part of their everyday lives.

2. Because it’s massive. .

I guarantee you that if you have sat through a social media pitch, that you have been bombarded with figures like ‘If Facebook was a country, it would the 4^th largest in the world’. The country with the 4^th biggest population is Indonesia, yet my bet is that your business has no presence there. What’s more, you probably don’t have any plans to be in Indonesia any time soon. That’s because pure market size is not the only thing that matters to real businesses.

Last week there was a story about how Pepsico were going to use location service FourSquare for marketing purposes. The article reported that FourSquare has a million users. Let’s put that another way – there are about 308 Million people who don’t use FourSquare in the US alone.

3. Because your customers are interacting with each other on social media.

In 2008 there were an estimated 6.5 billion texts sent every month in the UK, but the vast majority were between individuals. There are very few companies (other than mobile networks) that have successfully used SMS text messaging for business.

Just because your customers and potential customers are talking to each other on social media is no guarantee that they want to interact with your business.

4. Because it’s cheap.

Anyone can set up a YouTube account. It doesn’t cost anything to create a Twitter feed or a Facebook page. Creating a LinkedIn Group takes minutes and you can blog away for free on all many of platforms.

Once it’s been set up, you can get an intern or an expert social media consultant to represent your brand assets the best way they see fit, despite in many cases not having any marketing or business credentials.

You’ve probably spent a lot of time and money to create your brand, why risk devaluing one of your most important business assets by cutting corners.

5. Because your competitors are doing it.

I’ve always had a dislike for consultants who think that their technology based model can be applied across industries and businesses without any need for modification. Look out for a social media pitch that tells you that you need to be on social media because there are others in your industry that are doing it. There are probably competitors of yours that do trade-shows or sponsorship or other outdoor advertising that you might not do. Me-too is never a reason to do anything.

1 Reason Your Business Should be Using Social Media.

There are many reasons why your business may benefit from using social media including; better customer service, increased brand awareness, targeted product positioning and understanding your customer’s requirements, but the number one, and only reason that your business should be using social media is…

Because it will deliver you revenue.

Social Media is just another weapon in your sales and marketing arsenal. It has a cost and it has a return. The only reason you should consider using social media for your business is if it is going to have a positive impact on the bottom line.

Value social media the same way you would value any other sales and marketing spend. What are your objectives? How do you know if you have succeeded?

If you are being told that engaging in the conversation is enough and hopefully over time it may lead to sales, then ask yourself how much of your marketing budget you are willing to invest in that hope.

If on the other hand, you are being told how social media can have an impact on key metrics within your business like; transaction frequency, basket value, margin, customer satisfaction and loyalty, market share, recall rate, cost per lead and return on investment, then evaluate those numbers against your current marketing options and make a business decision.

This is important. I regularly see thoughts from the Twitterati asking “why doesn’t sport use social media more?” The answer for many sporting organisations is still – ‘that’s not where my audience is.’

While I can understand the frustration of social media evangelists, having been through a number of new technology cycles, I am not surprised at the adoption rate for new technologies. It was the same with the Internet and mobile phones.

It’s funny the business practises that stay with you. I remember a policy that employed by Procter & Gamble in Australia where I worked for a time. Senior Management were required to spend a number of days a month outside of the office and out in the supermarkets and pharmacies where the consumer made the ultimate buying decision. Many sales reps had a special route that showcased the stores where the companies products had maximum distribution or ceiling high displays. The problem with this was that management went away thinking that all was well.

At Unilever, a similar process was in place. Once off the road, as National Account Manager I used to demand that reps show me their worst stores. The ones where the competition always looked better, where the store owner refused to stock our products. Visiting these stores explained the numbers.

A similar thing happens with technology platforms. The early adopters who ‘get it’ start to convince everyone else that they should ‘get it’ too. They talk to other early adopters who nod and say ‘yes we are right’. Then you go and find examples to prove your point – clubs with millions of Facebook followers, and present it as proof. It’s very unfashionable to talk about the mass market, the majority who don’t use social media. And that’s just in the English speaking world.

Now try this exercise. Next time you feel like blogging about how a particular brand or organisation is missing out by not being on social media, don’t ask your followers and facebook friends if they agree with you – instead, leave your office, wander down to where the ‘real’ customers are and do a quick vox-pop. Ask them if they have ever heard of Twitter. Ask them if their favourite team had a facebook page whether they would use it to interact with that team.

Here are some quotes from real people from recent days. You might disagree, but they are what people think…

“I hate Facebook – too many old skeletons and people I don’t have any reason to talk to finding me. I don’t need Facebook to book tickets, I can use the club website or just call them.”

“Apparently there is this new one called LinkedIn which is meant to be for business, but I think it’s for small business – like lots of graphic designers and life coaches selling to each other. If you work for yourself I can see the point, but not in a corporate.”

“I just don’t get Twitter. It’s like code. Why would anyone care what I have to say? I like fans thinking what I might be having for breakfast without letting them down by telling them what I actually eat. Then you have all this techie programmer stuff to learn like RT and hashtag… it’s too hard. My blog works pretty well.”

“It’s all rubbish. What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned newspaper. Good writing, all the scores, portable, never runs out of batteries, I can read it wherever I want. Why do I have to interact? Most of the people who follow my team are morons. I wouldn’t want anything to do with them.”

Now instead of pushing social media, because that is your favourite thing at the moment, ask instead – Where is my audience?

If 90% of your fans have iPhones, then great – build an app. If 85% of them are active on Twitter, great fire up your Twitter accounts and engage. If however, your fanbase is talking on PHP-BB forums scattered around the country, then that’s where you should be talking to them.

There is no doubt that YouTube has changed the sporting landscape. The ability to be able to broadcast high quality – or low quality video around the world is available to anyone with a £15 webcam. As Nathenson says – Youtube is a great equaliser. Chelsea Football Club and the smallest teams have access to the same tools and the same audience, but you need to put in the effort.

While some brands might be scared of putting out content that has lower production values, despite making truly awful corporate videos, Nathenson says that User Interface is not important. Think of Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, not exactly the most good looking or friendly sites. Instead it is the content that is king. Some of the most successful videos on YouTube have no beginning, no middle and no end. What they do have is personality.

What YouTube knows, from millions of hours of content being uploaded and watched every minute of every day is that the old rules don’t apply.

Jeff Nathenson’s top tips for being successful.

1. Do not block comments. Turning off the ability for people to engage with your content limits the conversation. If people are writing negative comments, they are a refection on them, or YouTube rather than your brand or the content. Even if there are negative comments, there is no way for you to stop them.

2. Be flexible and be able to move quickly. YouTube is only 5 years old. Many other big tech brands have come and gone in the space of a few years. While Facebook and Twitter and Apple iPhone Apps might be the big thing now, they might all be replaced by something else just around the corner. This leads into point 3.

3. You are going to make mistakes. There are no gurus in this space. Some people have got lucky, some have applied good old fashioned marketing and business fundamentals to the new platforms and had success, but the ones who do best are those who experiment early and often and learn from mistakes.

One thing I disagree with Jeff Nathenson on is his comment that “you can throw a rock out a window, hit a teenager and get them to run this stuff for you.” I believe that if you have spent a lot of time and money in building a brand, then if you do decide to become more open and more public with your consumers via these mechanisms then it needs to be integrated with the rest of your communications.

Having one voice from corporate with one culture and another completely different voice on new media can have long term implications. You need to be true to your company culture and just as people should be themselves on social media, so too should brands not try and pretend to be something different.

Some sporting organisations make the mistake of lumping all fans together as a homogeneous mass. While there are some broad values that could be applied to the supporters of one club versus another, large global brands like Chelsea FC have a fanbase that spans nationalities, socio-economic types and different access to technology.

As Jerry Newman was speaking, Facebook was announcing that 700,000 Chelsea Fans were being reclassfied as 700,000 people who ‘liked’ Chelsea FC. The club’s Twitter stream is attracting new followers at a rate of 2000 a month. For Chelsea, new media is an unofficial channel that can be more nuanced, less corporate and careful.

Newman’s top tips are similar to those of many who spoke on the day.

1. Understand your customers. Not a new media thing. Not even a sport thing. Just a fundamental of business. New Media allows for a feedback mechanism that is honest and in real-time.

2. Always be learning and Act on what you learn. This speaks to the power of analytics and data. Who is watching what? Where are fans coming from? What languages are they speaking? Where are the conversations happening. Why are some pages never visited? YouTube, Facebook and other top channels provide powerful insights and metrics about demographics that can be used to create more value.

3. Interact. Don’t be afraid to engage. This is the thing that scares some people the most. The fear of negative feedback paralyses businesses from getting more involved, however sports fans are by definition fanatical about the athlete or team that they follow and for every negative comment there will be brand advocates – one eyed supporters who will fight the corner of the brand. Think about Apple – for every person that is sceptical about the iPad, there are hundreds who will defend it – even if they have never seen one.

See how smaller rights owners and teams are putting some of these thoughts into practise. Proof that you don’t have to be Chelsea FC to make it work.

What’s next? Or are Twitter and Facebook etc. the platforms for a generation?

Only a fool would try to predict the future of Social Media. Youtube is only 5 years old and 5 years ago not many would have predicted the impact that it has had on media as we know it. But those of us who have been in Social media for 10 years or more know that it moves more slowly than you might think. (For those of you who disbelieve Social Media is more than 10 years old – see this history of Bolt.com )

The More things Change – The More they Stay the Same.

There is nothing new. We have 5 or so senses that we use to consume the world around us. Sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Media is designed to activate those senses so we have audio, video, still pictures, the written word and live events.

Many of the biggest sporting communities are not on Facebook or Twitter, they are on the same forum software that used to exist when people dialled up to the earliest bulletin boards. Millions of others have a tried and tested social media platform called ‘the Pub’. So the more things change the more they stay the same.

An example of this is radio. Radio is different to any other media in that it doesn’t require the use of hands or sight. You cannot operate an iPad while driving a vehicle, but you can consume radio. Podcasts have taken radio and given it massive global audiences and Social Media will enhance radio and make it more interactive.

Apps are also a case of going back to the future. The vast majority of apps for smartphones are unimaginative rehashing of processes that existed for touch-tone phones and SMS text messaging. Remember when you used to dial the talking clock? Some of the apps haven’t moved on much. There are some great apps coming in the form of augmented reality, but apps aren’t the future. Why should I have to download an app for every brand I want to interact with? This would be like having a to download a different browser for every web-page I want to visit.

Often the simplest innovations are the best. We have faster connections than ever, we have more processing power than ever, we have HD and 3D video capability and yet Twitter offers us a mere 140 characters of text to communicate with.

Of course Twitter’s brevity is also the source of its biggest threat – that we lose collective memory because we only think back to the last 50 headlines in our feed and we lose real insight. Ideas are reduced to pithy phrases that people ‘like’ or retweet because they are too lazy to ask “is that right?” or “how do you know that?”

Hopefully there will always be a place for trusted brands in the delivery of news and insight. Sometimes the debate benefits from a period of contemplation rather than knee-jerk opinion. This in-depth reporting is expensive, so it will be interesting to see how the business models shake out.

The Future – Important Trends that Could Change Sports Media.

Those who don’t remember Bolt.com or Friendster or Friends ReUnited may struggle to imagine a world where Facebook or LinkedIn don’t exist. Those who remember MySpace might understand how easy it is to get things very right very quickly but not have a plan to stay relevant.

Relevance and context are the future of not just Social Media, but media in general. We have increasing access to more real-time data that will make our experience of sport better.

The information that specialist commentators used to be fed via an earpiece from an army of researchers can now be displayed alongside live action.

The data will not just be about the game though. Those wanting to communicate with you will have more information about you. Where you are, what kind of device you are using to consume the game, which side you support, who your friends are, what influence you have in the community. The opportunities lie in using that information in a way that enhances the experience instead of making it worse.

Mobile gets a lot of attention and for good reason. There are more people with a mobile phone than have internet, but there are other connected communities like those who own gaming consoles like Playstaton, Xbox or Wii.

The technology exists for people to play a game in real-time against other players around the world, but it could also drive real-time competition against the professionals. Racing alongside Jenson Button in Monaco or playing a round of Augusta with the leading group is possible today.

In summary – while technology changes, people don’t. You’ll support your team however you can – whether that is listening to it on shortwave radio or sitting in the front row seats with a handheld view of the parts of the action you can’t see. On Monday morning you will talk about the match with your mates. You’ll feel good if your girl won or down if she lost. Social Media can enable those conversations and the platforms that are most relevant will win.