What Marshmallow Can Teach You

Success is largely determined by one's ability to delay gratification. This applies to just about any endeavor. Being the kind of person who likes to observe things, I noticed that social media and online marketing are no exceptions.

The Marshmallow Test & Delayed Gratification 

 Walter Mischel, a Standford psychologist, conducted a delayed gratification study in the 1960's on a group of kids. He gave each of them a marshmallow. They were told they could earn another one for being patient, if they refrained from eating it (for 20 minutes) until the instructor came back.

Some of the kids ate their marshmallow right away. Others resisted their impulse and waited. Mischel followed up with both groups 14 years later.

The kids who immediately ate their marshmallow were described in these later years, by parents and teachers as "stubborn, prone to envy and easily frustrated." (fitzvillafuerte.com)

The kids who waited were "more self-motivated, educationally successful and emotionally intelligent." (fitzvillafuerte.com) They even scored higher on their SAT's. You can read more details about their career success as adults in newyorker.com.


Here is a reproduction of the marshmallow test





Gratification Delay and Online Marketing

There are 2 ways to acquire new business/ traffic. Please note, I am not saying that one is better than the other. I am just saying that there are 2 routes for marketing. Ideally, both should be done for optimal results.

1. short term tactics
2. long term tactics.

Patience for number 2 is obviously needed.


The Short Term Path
Examples of short term tactics include:

• email marketing

• pay per click

•  SEO

Short term tactics give you fast  results. But guess what? They are done by practically everyone. Eventually, these do hit a point of diminishing returns. When you rely too heavily on them, you lose opportunities to develop and differentiate your brand. In the eyes of your target market, you are just a name in a sea of comparative companies.


The Long Term Path
What I call long term tactics are those things that strike most companies as frivolous, fluffy, nice to haves. Upon first impression, they seem like a waste of time. But they are all ways to present unique philosophies & perspectives. And they allow you to entertain, engage and develop quality relationships that motivate brand loyalty,  greater visibility and recognition.

These are things like:

• regular blogging
• team brainstorming
  
• white papers
• quality, personable networking
  
• professional photography
• thoughtfully produced video content
• feedback gathering to evolve your offerings
  
• podcasts
• social network tools, community building etc.

Oh I can hear the groans and moans already. After all, most businesses just want to eat their marshmallows RIGHT NOW. Many of them don't want to wait for more candy at a later point in time.

When done correctly with the needs of customers fully in mind, these kind of strategies  build valuable sentiment.  I can just imagine some readers vehemently resisting this concept. What does touchy-feely, sentiment have to do with business?

Well I've already broken one of the rules of blogging, which is to keep posts short. So I will just present a quote by Maya Angelou which sum up the answer really well.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.  

 And if the sentiment is strong and compelling enough, they might even refer you to their friends. Remember, this is where word of mouth, viral marketing starts.

In the eyes of prospective customers, users, members etc, do you want to be remembered or forgotten?

Again, I am not saying you should ditch all short term marketing strategies. They just need to be balanced out with the foundation building that long term strategies require. When you reach the point of diminishing returns, there will be no need to worry if you've laid the groundwork for increasing returns to come your way.

On this final note, here are more words of wisdom by Maya Angelou.

"All great achievements take time"

Peppermint Bark and the Social Experience

During the first week of January 2010, I had my very first taste of peppermint bark. I'm not a big fan of candy canes, so the idea of peppermint+ bark was not particularly appealing to me.

But it seemed like I was seeing it everywhere. Martha Stewart has a recipe for making this yourself. And as with all her projects, she showed a really pretty picture of the final product on her website. Every time I went to Trader Joe's I saw the boxes of peppermint bark on the shelves.

So over this past week, I decided to take the plunge and try the one by Trader Joe's. I've never been so wrong about a candy in my life! I am absolutely in love with peppermint bark right now.

(image courtesy of houseoffowler.com)

In fact, I was so enamored with Trader Joe's peppermint bark that I decided to Google it. Lo and behold, a lot of other people were also inspired to talk about peppermint bark online (particularly Trader Joe's versus the William's Sonoma version)

Here is a partial list, in no particular order

1. Waterowl.blogspot.com
2. Chowhound.chow.com
3. Typetive.com
4. Gothamist.com
5. Epinions.com
6. TraderJoesfan.com
7. Gigi-Reviews.blogspot.com

Heck. Even Amazon sells Trader Joe's peppermint bark. ($14.95 looks pricey. But you are getting a lot of peppermint bark)














Lesson of the day
If anyone is still asking about how they can get people to talk about their product online, the answer is to make it good and worth talking about.

When I was on LinkedIn, a title caught my eye, "Are You Creating  Evangelists?" What a question! Most people...and this even includes major corporations will reluctantly admit that the answer is no. It's so easy to get caught up in short term seemingly urgent details. And we brush aside the things we need to do to create brand advocates. Rochelle Moulton, the author of this post, gives some great advice on how to do this.

I doubt that the people behind Trader Joe's sat around and asked how they could create evangelists. More likely than not, they were just concerned with providing quality food products & trusted that people would be happy to spread the word. Without direct effort, they got like me to be their evangelist!  The other day I did some tweets about their baklava.And today I am publishing this blog about their peppermint bark.

This is just one example. It may not apply in this exact form to every business. It might be best for you to make deliberate efforts to create brand advocates as Rochelle Moulton suggests.

Regardless of what industry you are in,  you  need to make deliberate efforts to make your customers happy.
If you are not sure what to do, reach out and get direct insight from them.

The Spirit of Engagement

Social Media & Common Sense

Some things in life happen through the right attitude or spirit. Remember when Jack Skelington used equations to analyze and figure out the Christmas spirit in Nightmare Before Christmas? Pretty silly isn't it? Check out 9:30 in the video clip below.





Likewise, analysis can only get you so far when it comes to social media. Many people really miss the point when it comes to engaging online audiences. It has become needlessly complicated.

Getting people to talk about your brand does not result from sheer technical prowess. And nor should it happen automatically just because you've built an awesome site.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people out there who seem to believe this. Maybe this is what happens when money and projects are at stake.

The Business of Online Marketing

Professionals in social media have a strong need for measurable parameters to forecast outcomes. This is understandable though.

Business is a serious game. But it doesn't need to be that serious, especially if it makes brands less appealing to audiences. And formalities shouldn't result in rigid overly conventional practices. If they prevent "outside the box" thinking, it's time to restructure outmoded & ridiculously linear ways of doing things.

Providing Experiences

Engaging your audience is about capturing their interest. And just as you can't come up with a formula for capturing Christmas spirit, you can't come up with a formula for online engagement.

Yes you can look at behavioral data to see what types of content get the highest numbers. But anyone can do this. But if you don't care about the quality of your selection, then no one else will either.

Behavioral data can be used as a general gage to see what your audience is interested in. Take this information and add your own personal touch. Then honestly ask yourself if this is interesting to you. And ask others for help as much as you can for their feedback.

If this sounds fluffy, think again. Social media is about sharing and being social.

With methodology aside, the spirit behind online engagement is about providing fresh and exciting experiences to audiences. All of us are inspired to share and talk about web content that is striking to us in some fashion.

So why not provide the same quality to your own content? Why not become focused on providing great experiences for people who come to your site? Either find a way to do it yourself, or get someone to do this for you.


Sound Advice

In my last post, I created a list of Jack Trout quotes. I think a few of them are relevant here.

• Common sense is your guide
• Research can obscure the obvious. A flood of data should never be allowed to wash away your common sense and your own feeling for the market
• When presented with a simple obvious strategy, many clients are not impressed. They are often looking for some clever, not so obvious idea.

I have a feeling I might be referring to this quote list throughout the life of this blog. I don't want to become redundant, but it's really hard not to consider these excerpts from Mr. Trout's book.
You'd be a complete fool to ignore them.

What Does Psychology Have To Do With Social Media?

"Psychology is the study of the mind, thought, feeling and behavior"-Wikipedia

My major in college was Psychobiology. For the purposes of this blog, I am not going to talk about biology. But I'd like to discuss different topics in Psychology and how research in this area matters for social media.

Sure, there are many supposed experts in this social sphere. But does their collective knowledge represent all that ever needs to be known about harnessing the mysterious (I'm being facetious) powers of social media?

It surprises me that research findings in Psychology have yet to really interface with the realm of social media. This does take place to some extent. But applying academic research does not seem to be common practice.

Basic Questions in Psychology

The area of psychology is divided into branches. There basic inquiries are very much relevant to online marketing campaigns.

• Cognitive Psychology:  How people solve problems, think, remember, forget and utilize language.

• Perceptual Psychology- How people make sense out of the information they come across

• Social Psychology- "How people think, influence and relate to one another." (socialpsychology.org)

• Psychology of Behavior-What causes people to behave in a certain way?

• Psychology of Learning- How people learn. What factors optimize learning experiences?

Why Research Findings Are Useful

Research experiments involve large numbers of subjects. Therefore the findings are not whimsical guesses. Statistics are used to determine whether or not the outcome of these experiments are due to chance or the variable in question. These two factors help ensure that conclusions are reliable. Reliable conclusions allow us to make predictions on a broad range of situations.

Being familiar with research literature is extremely useful if you want to make better decisions with social media strategies, instead of falling for various myths.

A Realistic Look At Your Offerings

What are you offerings and how are they being communicated to your audience?

Think this a ridiculously simply question?

You know what you provide.  But your brand perception is  your perspective. Other people might see your brand in a completely different way. These are your customers. So it does matter how your brand is represented in their minds.

It is not always easy to see your brand with fresh eyes. Getting honest feedback from other people and using this information to develop your brand will be worth the effort.

Here is a list of four basic questions for you to seriously consider in planning out your strategy for product development and marketing strategies. To make this list work for you, start writing down your answers on a piece of paper and take note of any areas where you become stuck. You might be surprised at what an eye opening experience this is.

• What exactly are your offerings? Does your product benefit others? Does it make things easier? More enjoyable? Does it solve a particular problem?

• Do your offerings have a differentiated edge? If all your competitors offer what you do, then why should your market audience choose you?

• How well does the average person in your target audience understand what your product is about and how it can benefit them?
  

• Is the language in your marketing material convoluted & wordy? Are the benefits clearly communicated?

As you can see, these considerations require that you perceptually step outside your business and look at your brand from a consumer's point of view. It's like being two people at once.

Product development and  marketing are often thought of as completely separate departments.  But let's look at this realistically. If your offerings are weak, marketing will not work. Don't think that smoke and mirrors can disguise a poorly developed product. This might have worked somewhat in the past. But with the internet, everything is quite transparent. Your customer's best interests are in your best interest. On the web, word of mouth marketing and social media can work for or against you.