this article was published by iMediaConnection on July 25th, 2008:
Recent Nike and Visa campaigns provide true value to customers and prospects. Learn how to boost your brand through similar online strategies.
Leading brands can maintain their competitive edge by transforming their communications from mere messaging to campaigns that provide genuine value to customers and prospects alike. Although a number of smaller brands have embraced the concept of “marketing as service” to expand their customer base and increase loyalty within their niches, it is even more telling when two savvy marketers like Nike and Visa shift ad dollars in this direction.
The notion of providing what some call “brand utility” via marketing communications is not necessarily new. (Consider Michelin guides, for example.) However, the ubiquity of the web and social media has created extraordinary opportunities in this area for big and small companies. And while neither Nike nor Visa is a newcomer to this pursuit, they have recently upped the ante with their respective online efforts.
Nike Boot Camp is a veritable tour de force that no aspiring soccer player should miss. Aiming to provide a “world-class training program,” Nike immodestly boasts that it can “turn you into a high-performance soccer player.” The company attempts to demonstrate its promise of “30 percent improvement in your power, speed and stamina” through action-packed, handheld video and inspirational comments from top players.
As one blogger described it, “It’s basically a digital soccer class you can take for either 4 or 6 weeks. Genius.” By providing this so-called class, Nike is demonstrating that it truly appreciates the ambitions of serious young soccer players. (Keep in mind that soccer is now the single largest participation sport in the U.S.) I’m personally not a fan of the company’s emphasis on the phrase “next level” (see my rant). However, after watching the site’s videos of men running with parachutes on their backs for resistance, I have to admit that Nike is setting new standards here.
Nike is hardly a newbie when it comes to using the web to provide valuable content to its targets. Earlier NikeFootball.com renditions included soccer trick video clips from all over the world that viewers could rate. This feature was both entertaining and useful, especially since kids could attempt the tricks they saw at home. Indeed, the utility of the old site was indisputable. Further, soccer isn’t the only sport for which Nike is allocating more marketing dollars and spending less on traditional advertising — the Nike+ program has been keeping pace with runners’ needs for the past two years.Just a few weeks ago, Nike 6.0 — which focuses on action sports products — launched a branded community for skaters, bikers and surfers on Loop’d. With its profiles and photo sharing, this community offers the usual functionality of a social network, but its users are also given the opportunity to compete for commercial partnerships — a pretty darn cool feature for enthusiasts. This program provides further utility with a mix-and-match mashup that can be ported over to other social networks like Facebook and MySpace.
Like Nike, Visa is an overall market leader — but not necessarily in every market segment. In order to gain currency with small business owners who have many other options, including both MasterCard and American Express, Visa recently launched the Visa Business Network on Facebook. Rather than simply running more ads (Visa spends a whopping $675 million or so annually), the company elected to provide real utility in multiple ways for the small office–home office, or SOHO, crowd.
Recognizing that small business owners might not have discovered the power of Facebook, Visa provides a series of pleasantly digestible bite-sized videos. Each video includes a real-life business, such as a cheese shop and an eyeglasses store, and demonstrates how the company tapped into Facebook’s highly viral network. Additionally, to make it easy for small businesses to get started, Visa is offering a $100 advertising credit to the first 20,000 that sign up. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.
Visa is not just dipping its toes into this effort — it is diving in head first. Partners including AllBusiness, Entrepreneur, Forbes.com and the Wall Street Journal will provide relevant news and commentary to network subscribers. Google will provide support with mashups and online software, while Microsoft will bring its software heft to the party. All in all, Visa has arranged a veritable armada of content, tool kits and savvy that no small business would want to be without.
By helping these businesses connect with their customers online, Visa is providing a truly valuable service that should help the cash registers ring all the way around. We can certainly expect MasterCard and American Express to watch this social networking experiment very carefully and to serve up their own iterations at some point. Undoubtedly, they won’t be giving credit where credit is due.Even to the trained skeptic, the logic of befriending your best customers on Facebook is inescapable. Small business owners are particularly susceptible to word of mouth; positive WOM can drive customer acquisition, and negative WOM can send sales into a tailspin. A 2007 study by McKinsey found that 27 percent of all one-on-one conversations included some serious discussion of products or services.
The formula being employed by Nike and Visa is reasonably simple: create a service that prospects and customers can use, make it easy for them to share this service with their friends, and use advertising to jumpstart initial interest in the program. If the utility is there, prospects will inevitably become customers, customers will become brand evangelists, and neither will consider zapping the companies’ efforts.
This approach is not just for the big guys. Smaller companies can establish leadership within their niches by delivering genuine utility through their marketing activities. Constant Contact, a leading email marketing service, has managed to build a customer base of more than 100,000 small and medium-size businesses. About a year and a half ago, the company built a social network, ConnectUp!, for its customer base. ConnectUp brings together thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs who help each other solve real business problems, as well as share and gain insights on marketing and other topics of interest. To date, more than 8,000 members have joined ConnectUp. As a result, Constant Contact has expanded its leadership position and increased its market share.
So whether you are a global giant or just hoping to be the largest fish in your pond, you can maintain and enhance your position by using your marketing dollars to deliver real and ongoing utility to your customers and prospects. The web has opened a number of ways to transform your marketing into service — service that will boost word of mouth, increase conversation rates and keep the cash register ringing all the way through this sluggish economy.