free health check up of your marketing plan : introducing the m-cube model

MARKETERS Scale the 5ive Levels

Reality Check fornlineO

MediaAgility www.MediaAgility.com [email protected] 1-(866) MEDIA-V1

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License AgreementReality Check for Online Marketers : Scale the 5ive Levels by is licensed under a

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Please feel free to post this e-book on your blog or email it to whomever you believe would benefit from reading it.Thank You.

Trademarks and copyrightsMediaAgility, and the MediaAgility logo are trademarks of MediaAgility.

All other product or company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owner(s).

MediaAgilityCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

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Table of Contents

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1. The New Paradigm for Winning -- The Sci-Fi Pizza........................................................ * The New Paradigm Shift --- Why your business should take this Big Leap?

2. Rules for The New Paradigm of Marketing....................................................................... * No honking! Just engage your prospects * There are no ‘Gatekeepers’ * Keep It Real * You don’t control your brand anymore....Your customers do * Leverage social media for post-sales funnel

3. The BIG Social Media Question?............................................................................................. * What is social media? * Where do I start on social media? * How would I know what people are talking about my brand? * Should I go for a public community, or build one of my own? * What does the term ‘Go Viral’ mean in the social media parlance?

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4. Are you ready for the New Paradigm for Winning?Introducing M-Cube Model * Level 1 Mirror-Mirror on the Web.... * Level 2 Multi-Platform Branding * Level 3 Share 2 Succeed * Level 4 Listen and Engage to Influence * Level 5 Reach out to the Cloud

5. Strategies for the New Paradigm for Winning................................................................. * It’s time for a “Reality-Check” * Everyone needs an “Expert Advice” * “Agility” is the key here * Post-recession Period - it’s time to reinvent your organization

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Table of Contents

Pizza

The New Paradigm for Winning --- The Sci-Fi PizzaBefore treading into the realms of the New Paradigm, let’s take you through a story about the New Age Pizza...

It was a small celebration in our office and we all agreed for an on-the-floor pizza party. The crunch was that none of us had contact numbers of any nearby pizza delivery

outlets. So, one of the members of our creative team took her android-powered smartphone out and used its Google voice search feature to find them out. The phone transmitted the

speech query into the Google cloud where it got converted into text. And we received all the relevant information along with location and whether the given stores were open in a matter of few milliseconds. Though it wasn’t a pre-planned celebration, we were not in a mood to compromise on anything at all. So, the onus was passed on to our social media buffs to find out which one was the best of them all. They hopped on to Facebook, food directories, and gourmet blogs for the purpose and came up with some real gems. Our efforts eventually paid-off, and the party truly rocked!


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This may seem to be a regular, not so extra-ordinary story to you. Now, just give a little more thought to it, and give it a technological angle. Let’s tread into the lanes of nostalgia and recall some sci-fi thrillers of the 70s and 80s, where the protagonists were portrayed as super-humans. They had smart gadgets; able to talk to anyone, anytime at their wish, blessed with super memories, could make a virtual screen and take directions from their masters, could network with hundreds of their allies simultaneously...and a lot more. All that had been confined to the imaginations of sci-fi directors during the past decades has now become a tangible reality with technologies like cloud computing, smartphones, social media, and apps - all well within our reach.

Technically speaking, we’re living at the helm of what was labeled as science fiction a couple of decades back. Coming together of all these robust technologies, such as smartphones, cloud, applications, and social media is what we tag as the

, and our aim is to help businesses fetch the most out of this blend.

“New Paradigm for Winning”


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The New Paradigm Shift

Why shouldyour business

take this leap?

All this noise surrounding the New

Paradigm might sound far too geeky and a pricey affair at the first glance.

And by the time, you might’ve even bred the ‘’ attitude towards it. Let’s clear this misconception in the

first place. Remember, embracing the New Paradigm isn’t technical, or expensive for that matter. Besides, the entire concept of switching to

the New Paradigm pivots around

How Does That Matter To Me

easing and energizing your work in a cost-efficient way.

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When it comes to online marketing, most of the businesses generally believe their job is done by having

an interactive website, or at best creating a Facebook and a Twitter page. Placing ‘Become Our Fan’ or ‘Follow Us’ buttons

has become a cliche in present businesses, and they don’t lure visitors at all. We have to shun this attitude in order to harness the

benefits of everything, from cloud computing to social media, that’s on offer.

A vivid presence on smartphones and tablets is another critical element that should be there in your business development drive. Go for having a mobile

and tablet-optimized website for your business. This would enable you to keep your targeted audiences engaged while they are on the move.


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Rules for The New Paradigm of MarketingLet’s go back to those business school days and recall some of the widely established marketing principles and processes. By now, you might be lost in a flock of traditional concepts, such as Branding, Positioning, 5P’s of Marketing, Labeling, and many more. However, the New Paradigm of Marketing has largely moulded these concepts to suit the existing business scenarios and thus rewritten the old business school marketing rule-book.

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Some of its reformed rules are:

Let’s rewind the clock to a couple of months back and assess how you were approaching your target audience. You might be coughing up huge amounts of money in buying advert slots in TV, or in newspaper classifieds. If you’re amongst the proactive businessmen, you might’ve even hired a PR agency to take care of your online business expansion.

But, after shelling out bucketfuls of money and efforts in business development, are you exactly satisfied with the results? Don’t you think you have been interrupting your potential customers by ad pop-ups while they’re browsing the web or when they are in the mid of their daily entertainment dose? Even the attempts from PR agencies at times appear exaggerated and highly mundane to your audience.

However, you might argue that these marketing methods have been performing well on the basis of the conventional business-school ROI scale. Owing to the changing consumers habits and marketing environments, your vision of making it BIG couldn’t materialize with these traditional techniques. You have to think out of the box and be creative than ever to convince the modern consumers instead of pelting them with jargon and hype laden product information.

1. No honking! Just engage your prospects:


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2. There are no ‘Gatekeepers’: We’ve entered into an era where the might of an organization isn’t judged by size or volumes, but by the number of fans or followers it has. Each and every being with the access to the New Paradigm technologies is empowered and can create a mass awareness with the help of a single review, a tweet, or a viral video. We have one interesting

(1)story to share with you that created the wave on the Internet in almost no time.

It involves a dissatisfied customer

who used YouTube and Twitter to propagate a

video describing United Airline’s mishandling of his

$3500 guitar, and subsequently refusing him to pay back for the

same. The video song, tagged “United Breaks Guitars”, went viral with more than 3 million views in a span of a week, followed by considerable print

and electronic media coverage of the issue.

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Blogs or

FLOGS3. Keep It Real:

BEWARE : The power of social media has redefined feedback and review processes and hence taken a shot on such practices.

With people making connections at a rate and scale the mankind hasn’t seen before, it’s high-time businesses should stop pretending and crowing about their products and services. Some companies even use fake blogs, or ‘flogs’, as they are known among netizens, to create an impact.

Wal-marting Across America blog, for instance, has been (2)a subject of case-studies , where the company reportedly paid bloggers

to burnish its image. So, just “keep it real” and pour your efforts in improving the quality of your offerings, instead of giving away misleading information to your prospects.


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4. You don’t control your brand anymore....Your customers do:

Pay heed to every single comment or a review about your

offerings on social media, and act accordingly.

Social media has brought upon a huge paradigm shift in marketing techniques,

changing it from ‘word-of-mouth’ to ‘word-of-mouse’ marketing.

Apparently, social media has simplified the idea of customer feedback by creating a

direct channel of interaction between businesses and end-users.

The impact of social media in making or breaking any brand can (3)be instanced by the GAP logo story. It all started with GAP

announcing its new logo on Facebook and Twitter pages. The new logo got a cold response from its fans, with the announcement meeting torrent of criticisms and suggestions. Later on, the company backtracked from its decision and decided to stick with its original logo.


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5. Leverage social media for post-sales funnel:

It’s a critical juncture to realize that you can’t buy the modern consumers’ attention or coerce them into going for your brand anymore.

Cost-effective accessibility of the Internet on the go on these powerful handheld devices has made things a lot simpler for businesses. It’s not just about spreading the word, you can leverage the New Paradigm for addressing multiple business requirements, ranging from post-sales requisites, such as customer service and troubleshooting, or keeping your operational costs in check, to mention a few.

(4) One fine example of this is the way Indian food and beverage company Parle Agro used the microblogging site Twitter to keep track of its stocks at various local stores across the country. The company, in a bid to reinforce its sales and distribution network, turned to Twitter to check stocks of its signature snacks brand Hippo. Started in February 2010, Parle Agro asked its Twitter followers to send a tweet whenever they couldn’t find Hippo at their nearest stores and promised to replenish the stocks within few hours. The initiative enabled Parle Agro to find empty racks at a faster pace, and even helped the company to explore potential markets. Success driven by such a distinguished initiative prompted the company to set up a distinct cell to keep responding to tweets of its followers.

Adopt rather interactive methods to influence and engage your customers. Try to strike conversations with them instead of making noise about your business.

In short, just hinge on to these new rules that would prove to be instrumental in encouraging online users to contribute genuine ideas that the users find interesting and worthy enough to share on networks to set off conversations about your business.


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The BIG Social Media Question?

The power of social media in deciding a brand’s image can’t be questioned in today’s scenario.People now have their own say about the virtues and shortcomings of the product, and can even influence the decision-making at the topmost level in any business vertical. However, there are certain key questions

that might keep cropping up in your mind whenever someone talks about using social media for businesses. These questions could be:

In simple words, social media is all about using web-based technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogues. Basically, this involves Web 2.0-powered applications which enable creation and exchange of user-generated content. Modern day social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, etc are considered as notable vehicles of social media.

What is social media?


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Where do I start on social media?

How would I know what people are talking about my brand?

Should I go for a public community, or build one of my own?

What does the term ‘Go Viral’ mean in the social media parlance?

This largely depends on where your target audience is. Owing to the number of their daily active users, Facebook and Twitter score over other social networking platforms. You can start with setting up an account with Facebook, as the social network wires more than 500 million users across the globe.

Setting up social media accounts doesn’t solve the purpose alone. Besides, it brings upon the responsibility of listening to what the online folks are talking about your brand. You can either do it manually, or opt for some effective brand-monitoring tool for the purpose. If your social media campaign has a substantial penetration, then a fully-featured brand-monitoring tool is highly recommended.

This hinges on to the popularity of your business. If you’re a rookie to social media and want people to know about your brand and what you do, then you should obviously go for some popular social media platform. Besides, if you’ve already garnered enough popularity among the folks, then building your community could be a smart option.

Virality is a social media phenomenon that includes spreading around of content on social media sites to create mass awareness. This can be best explained by the awe-inspiring story of Ted Williams, popularly named as

(5)“Golden Voice” , who got job offers after his video went viral on YouTube. Williams, a homeless man, got a job after a video of his street-interview received more than five million views in a span of around a week.


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Winning?Are you ready for the New Paradigm for

Having poured in all your efforts and time in online marketing, you might be inches short of qualifying for the New Paradigm for Winning in full swing. Just a few steps further can do the trick for you. In a bid to simplify your readiness for the adoption of the New Paradigm, we have designed a logical scale comprising of five levels that map your maturity level. Dubbed

as

, this interactive scale assists you to gauge where your business actually stands in terms of assuming newer technologies.

“MediaAgility Maturity Mapping Model”, or simply ‘M-Cube’ Model


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App EconomyThe New Paradigm for Winning

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Adopt Cloud Based InfrastructureRecommendations - Google Apps, SalesForce, Advanced Brand Monitoring Tools

Web Property; Presence on major Social Media Networks

Brand Monitoring ToolRecommendations - UniPlayer

eBooks, Videos, help articles, forums, private community platform, social apps, games, mobile apps etc based on your industry.

Web 2.0 Upgrade; Mobile Website / Tablet Optimized experience; Intelligent SM Integration; Social Media Presence

Blog Site;2

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M-Cube Model

Level 1

Mirror-Mirror on the Web

An appealing web presence doesn’t simply restrict to having an appealing website anymore. But, now the idea extends to getting on to the social media platforms, as well as blog sites and forums, to achieve the all-important goal of customer-engagement!

These days businesses need to be present on a wide range of web-connected devices from mobile, tablets, Internet TVs, Netbooks, Laptops, PCs, and more to come. It starts with having a website that spells out your product or services in the most interactive and commonsensical way.


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Web2.0Level 2

Multi-Platform Branding

Your website should be mobile and tablet-optimized to help your

audience have anytime, anywhere access to YOU.

Once you register a fair presence on the web, uniform branding is the next thing in the line of things to be done. For this, you should an

interactive Web 2.0-powered website that ensures high interaction quotient and

augments the appeal of your online content.

Additionally, one important element under the universal branding theme is

ensuring presence on all popular web-connected platforms.


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Level 3

Share 2 Succeed

We’re living in the age where people’s discourse is no longer driven by company’s size and revenues, but by agility and their adaptability to changing business environs.

The content you offer would serve as triggers that would prompt your prospective customers to discuss about your brand on social media portals and blog sites.

So, don’t remain closed or reluctant to sharing information with your customers. Avoid throwing information overload on them and keep away from bragging about your product range and services. Instead, try to use diverse media and come up with suggestions that can help your customers resolve their business-related issues.

All depends on how well you engage your customers into discussing things surrounding your brand and business interests. Come up with engaging content, such as e-books, videos, help files, blogs, write-ups, private or open communities, social apps, games, mobile apps, or any other thing that you think would aid in influencing your audience.


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Level 4

Listen and Engage to Influence

The power of the social media isn’t anymore restricted to getting useful feedback and generating leads only, but you can exploit it to perform a range of functions too. Companies are already using them for various purposes, such as servicing, branding, sharing expertise knowledge, social co-creation etc.

There’s very little you can do about building your brand on social media sites. Yes, you can however influence the online users to discuss about topics surrounding your business interests. Success in this level lies in how resolutely you monitor various social media platforms scattered across the web.

(6)Dell , for instance, is already using its Facebook page to provide technical support to its customers.

Visit blogs and forums that are related to your business and contribute there with handy solutions and business ideas. All in all, this level includes effective use of the triggers you’ve created to set up a two-way human-face communication with your audience.

Level 5

Reach out to the Cloud

“collaboration”.

Cloud computing infrastructure ensures real-time collaboration and coherence

between different units of any organization.

Businesses might conceive that an imposing web presence with Web 2.0-powered website, and harnessing social media tools with interactive triggers would serve their business

development needs. Somewhere in the hotch-potch of things they might miss out on one critical factor -- Yes! Though it might sound a tad abstract in the first place, but a

little brainstorming would help you quantify this in real terms.

The fifth and final level of the M-Cube Model includes reaping the benefits of the cloud computing to ramp up the overall productivity and efficiency of an organization.

In addition to paving the way for free flow of information across the organizations, cloud architecture also helps

in checking operational costs.


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Strategies for the New Paradigm for Winning

Whatever has been discussed in the preceding sections under the concept of the New Paradigm for Winning isn’t just another revolution in words. But, it can very well be put into practice and can be harnessed to attain high productivity and profitability in the rapidly changing business environs. You just need to have a set of well-defined strategies for it. While you might have developed

your own schema of things by this time on how you would reap the fruits in the New Paradigm, let us augment your plans with some useful suggestions:


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Expert

It’s time for a “Reality-Check”

Everyone needs an “Expert Advice”

Conduct a thorough evaluation of where your organization presently stands with reference to the M-cube Model. Make your evaluation as detailed and broad as it can be, as an in-depth study would automatically finish half of your exercise. Focus on each and every aspect to check if it’s aligned well with the Level 5 requisites.

However, during the course of the evaluation if you find that your organization is at Level 1, then don’t lose your heart. In fact, there’s a linkage between all the levels and it would be a matter of a month or so when you could advance to embrace the New Paradigm. You just need to stay positive and open to usher in this all important change in your business style.

Yes, that’s true! Engage an expert who can take you through all these levels and guide you on subject-matter subtleties to make the most out of this emerging idea. Go for the professional outfit that can guide you on tapping into Smartphones Social Media, and Cloud Power - the three pillars of the New Paradigm. Start with a free evaluation on the M-Cube Model : http://check.mediaagility.com


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“Agility” is the key here

Post-recession Period - it’s time to reinvent your organization

We’re living in the ‘Internet age’ where we can’t undermine the importance of bringing upon

the essential changes in tune with the rapidly changing business conditions. In other words, what you need is a big vision with small steps. Change management is something that holds huge significance in the current situation when newer technologies keep hitting the floor every passing day.

The global economic meltdown has exposed the industry’s preparedness to deal with big shockers. In fact, it has called for

some fundamental changes in the way businesses are done across the globe. While the global economy is still in the recovery

mode, opportunities for the businesses that take up the New Paradigm would be immense.


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Refrences

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B R A N D M O N I

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for more information please visit: http://www.mediaagility.com/brandagility_brand_promotion

Y ur Is A o s

H Uselp

S ar Busin s.m t es ..

Make It Sm terar

Our BrandAgility suite of services is designed to enable you build a robust yet engaging brand. Being a New Paradigm company, we know what it takes to catch the eye in the modern

environment that’s largely driven by customer engagement and comprehensive inclusion of consumers at all levels. We offer subject-matter expertise in Web 2.0 and social technologies and empower you to make the most out of the social media buzz.

We also offer efficacious brand-monitoring services to help you keep a vigil eye on whatever is being said about your brand on different social media platforms.

How well do you ride the

Social Media Wave?

effective?

Are your Web 2.0 initiatives

New Paradigm Are you aware of the

Marketing strategies?

Answer a few questions about your company and check your level in the MediaAgility Maturity Model for Marketeers!”

http://check.mediaagility.com

MediaAgility Global Reach MediaAgility USAMail: [email protected]: 1-(866) MEDIA-V1Website : www.mediaagility.com

Administrative Contact -Mail: [email protected]: 1-(866) MEDIA-V1Fax: 1 (866) 633-4058

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Copyr

ight 2011

Media

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free health check up of your marketing plan : introducing the m-cube model

Business

new paradigm shift

new paradigm of marketing

social media parlance

leverage social media

new age pizza

trademarks of mediaagility

big social media question

cec nd mk o odwh n