The Power of Marketing Friends in Social Media

If you knew five of my friends have tweeted or posted on Facebook rave reviews about their Audi, Q5, wouldn't you push that listing higher? Sure you would, but it's impossible to ask me questions about every topic I'm searching for. Of course, there is a better way to get to the same result, and it takes us back to the "Wisdom of Crowds" -- in this case, my crowd.

My friends and I happen to share similar geography and circumstances for the most part, which causes some amazing similarities. Moreover, I am much more likely to trust my friends' opinions than those of strangers. Anyone that's recently been on the search for a good doctor or dentist or accountant knows intimately how important it is to get recommendations from those you trust. This is "friendsourcing" -- the concept that people I know give better and more reliable answers for me than the world can as a whole.

To say this means we're on the edge of something big is a catastrophic understatement, but marketers have only started to scratch the surface of what this means for them and their clients. At very least, we've got three fundamental paradigm shifts to deal with:
1. What brands say and do in social media has an increasingly direct effect on how they will appear in search engines, both in search results position and in description.
2. The more friends in my social circle (aka my "social graph") talk about your brand, the more likely I am to see your brand, click on your brand's listing and become another voice talking about your brand.
3. Many brands have recognized that their impact in social media is both powerful and tangible, but now that impact will easily spill over into other channels. "Social" isn't just a silo in your channel mix anymore, and the lines will be increasingly blurred with mass media, CRM, SEO/SEM or other channels.

The good news is that it's never too late to stake a new claim in social media for your brand. So to get your team or your clients started, here are some quick first steps: Listen, record, observe and compare

There are a million tools on the market for searching or filtering social media conversations, and many of them are free -- Chris Brogan has an excellent list of the ones he uses here. Most organizations are doing this already, but it's usually in a vacuum from other marketing efforts. Instead of just looking through your "ego feeds" (conversations about your company), start checking on the conversations around your search engine marketing portfolio of keywords, or use Google's keyword tool to analyze your site and start your own list. It's often interesting to see the gap between what people say about you and what they say about your product or service -- this can lead to ideas for new content on your site or places for your social media team to try to change conversations. For extra credit, start comparing the trends on these terms to your offline media: are my mass communications moving this needle? Did my latest direct-mail piece with the killer offer spark some new conversation?

Start holding everyone responsible, but make someone accountable. Your organization's social "footprint" can't be managed as a hobby. Large or small, it's time to take this seriously, because the impact will be felt from cyberspace to the cash register. Almost all marketing units are affected by (and will probably have an opinion on) social media, so it's often good to start with some kind of a "task force" comprised of representatives from each. However, the business needs to make a decision of exactly which person will own its social presence. This person doesn't need to be the one running it day-to-day, but they need to be able to speak to it fluently and have the power to make a difference.

Create a social media "lodestone" within each of your marketing efforts. Even with a cross-functional team or steering committee, it's hard to keep the social media conversation from gravitating to just a couple of marketing functions. To be truly effective, each discipline needs to know how they intersect with social media, and needs to define that in a way that attracts and excites new projects. PR, for example, can own reaching out to specific voices and generating influential conversations. CRM, however, has the opportunity to focus on longer dialogues with individual customers.

Online Newspaper Advertising - Latin America

Online newspapers are the essential link for people to stay connected to information, news and their home countries.

When they read the news directly from online newspapers such as La Prensa from Panama or La Republica from Costa Rica, they are receiving un-biased news and information directly from their country. Readers review their local news covering subjects from politics to the latest gossip from their countries' entertainment. Now the technological enhancements of the internet makes reading online newspapers easier than ever!

I stumbled upon an article by Mort Goldstrom about the reasons why to advertise in online newspapers. I think this very much applies to Latin America and reinforces why it is so important for advertisers to include this in their online marketing mix. I hope sharing this with you increases your knowledge and helps you understand more in depth how the online newspaper opportunities can really work for your clients.

10 Reasons to Advertise on a Newspaper Website
Frequency- The online newspaper Web site user spends more than twice as many hours online than the general user. Online newspaper users are three times as likely as general 'Net users to be online during the workday when out of reach of other media - 8-11 a.m. is a new "primetime" for media consumption (Source: "Power Users," 2006, MORI Research)

Credibility- Branded content brings a higher quality audience. A study from the Online Publishers Association (OPA) showed that OPA audiences were more likely to buy products and services in a number of key categories, including automotive, entertainment, financial, home, travel and business to business.

Targeted- If you want to focus on a particular backyard, advertising in an online newspaper is more personal and more relevant because it is local. Newspapers also publish a plethora of niche sites (youth, women, movie fans, Hispanics, are illustrative) for virtually any demographic advertisers could possibly hope to reach. - "Newspapers know more than ever about their web audience because of online registration programs and audience segmentation software"]

Purchasing Power- Eighty-nine percent of newspaper Web site users purchase online compared with 56 percent of general users. Forty percent of online newspaper users have incomes higher than $75,000; 69 percent own their homes. Eighteen percent of online newspaper users have spent more than $2,000 online in the last six months.

Content- Excluding e-mail the most popular online activities and content categories include national and local news, sports, financial information and entertainment news and things to do. [Shopping, cited in the original, is lower on the list.] Fifty-four percent of general Internet users visit online newspapers for local news, compared with 40 percent for the local TV station Web site and 20 percent for the local radio station site. ["Power Users," 2006, MORI Research]

Advertisers Believe in Newspaper Sites- Online newspapers have enjoyed eleven consecutive quarters of double digit increases for advertising since NAA started reporting online ad spending in 2004.

High Profile- Online newspapers generate very large gains in Online Ad Awareness among C-level and other higher management job holders: C-level managers showed a 23 percent increase in Aided Brand Awareness, VP/director-level managers showed a 38 percent increase and other management showed a 37 percent increase following their exposure to an ad campaign in online newspapers (across all industries.) When the brand metric shifts to Message Association, C-level execs showed the largest increase in lift after exposure to campaigns on online newspapers, at 88 percent. No management category showed less than a 51 percent increase. (Dynamic Logic's MarketNorms database, 2006)

Reinforcement- Fifty-six percent of online newspaper users also read the newspaper in the past five days, and repetition increases awareness.

Cutting Edge- Newspaper Web site users are more likely (by almost twenty percent to own some kind of portable electronic device. They are also more interested in receiving advertising and product offers through those devices. Forty percent of online newspaper users are aged 18 to 34. [Source: "Power Users," 2006, MORI Research]

Mix- A variety of recent studies have demonstrated the power of online, when included in a mix with traditional media, to elaborate the brand message. Newspaper, print, and online products combined have the highest penetration and most desirable audience of any other local medium.

Time Management in Marketing & PR

“I need more time”. “There just aren’t enough hours in the day to get this done”. “I’ll be burning the midnight oil”. How many times have you heard any of these from a co-worker or said them yourself? Marketing and PR projects can be just as much of a time crunch as in any other industry. With that said, it’s important for clients to understand project timelines/deadlines so the work can be completed on time and efficiently.

1. Make a plan
You have a project, now make a plan as to how it will be implemented. Who will be working on the project? What information is needed to get it done? When is it due? Who is in charge of putting the project together for delivery?

2. Implementation
Now that you have your plan together, with tasks assigned, it’s time to implement. Have regular meetings with team members to make sure everyone is on track and there are no problems. Handle any problems that arise immediately. If someone is unable to obtain a key piece of information, brainstorm, reach out to others, if necessary.

When working on the project timelines, build in time for reviewing and making changes to the project (brochures, scripts, ads, etc).

3. Delivery
When delivering the project, have someone with fresh eyes review the project. Make changes where necessary to ensure a valuable product is delivered.

4. Thank the team
Don’t forget to always thank your team members for their important contributions. If something went awry, consider it a learning experience and don’t make the same mistake next time.

5. Review
Review what went right and wrong on the project. Take team members’ input seriously. If necessary, do a case study and distribute it throughout the company. Everyone will appreciate knowing how to do things more efficiently.

These are just some of the things that can be done to ensure your project stays on task and on time. Any other suggestions?

Hiring a Digital Agency

Hiring (and firing) an agency goes with the territory for brand marketers. But what was once a multi-year (or longer) relationship between the brand client and their agency has become much more fluid. Whether you're talking about bringing in a new agency of record or adding another player to your agency mix, brand-side clients are always evaluating agency talent, and the fast pace of digital means that brands will likely have to sign on the dotted line with greater frequency.

There are a number of places to start when hiring a new agency, start by asking, "Why do we need a new agency?" Maybe you've inherited them and you just can't work together -- you've tried, but it's a chemistry thing.

Why do we need a new agency? -- will always lead to some rather profound insights, if the brand can be honest about its own corporate culture as well as what's gone right (and wrong) with the relationship at hand. While that may sound like simple advice, it's a pill not easily swallowed by many clients.

Broadly speaking, ask yourself if your company culture supports the changes the agency is trying to make? Examine your relationship to see if it allows for shared risk. Is the agency forced to stay inside a box or are they given some freedom?

Those answers may not always be available because in some cases, the relationship may have become so bad that it's nearly impossible to see the forest through the trees. Take the time to reflect on your own corporate culture and how it interplayed with their previous agency stand a much better chance of getting it right with their next hire.

Beware of the specialist search
Scan the tech blogs and you'll quickly see that digital creates new communication channels faster than advertisers can figure out how to use them. But CMOs who want to integrate their media strategy face a difficult dilemma: Do you opt for a "specialist" agency -- a social media shop, for example -- to work in a highly technical area, or do you hire one agency that can bring it all together at the risk of sacrificing some key knowledge in an emerging area?

The answer depends more on your own organization's strength and weaknesses than anything else. It's all about orchestration, if you have the time and staff to orchestrate across multiple specialists, then you have the option to spread the love. If you're like most organizations, however, and you're short-staffed and time-crunched, then you should find and assign a lead agency and have them sub-contract for the specialists.

If you have a lead agency responsible for bringing holistic thinking, then they will have the responsibility to be constantly searching for specialists and providing you with thought leadership and success.

Restless can be a winner
No matter how exhaustive your hiring process is, you will always face the same problem: All agencies look great before you hire them.

They always put their best foot forward when you're looking at a new agency. A lot of times you're looking at their work, and maybe it wasn't all their original idea, but they executed on it. Or maybe they had the big idea, but some other agency put it in action -- no agency is ever going to tell you exactly what they did. So, there's always some mystery there.

It's not about what the agency did to get in the room with him -- that's all prelude. In a nutshell, he says, he's always on the lookout for a "restless" agency. It's really about doing great work, but having that mindset to say, okay we hit all of our goals, but how could we have done it better? That's the kind of restlessness you want from your agency.

Find an agency that experiment
It is important that the agency is adding expertise. There's always something new, something that's experimental, and it is important that the agency is keeping up with the times. That's critical, and experimentation is a sign of a good agency.

Look for existing partnerships
For better or worse, most brands use a mix of agencies these days. But whether those agencies work together or fight each other tooth and nail for a larger share of the client's business often depends on two factors.

First, it's up to the client to set the tone for cooperation, and while some brands prefer in-fighting among their agencies, most at least say that they want team work.
My experience on both the client and agency sides shows that regardless of whether the agencies work together; there will always be a level of competition going on.

You need to communicate the ground rules before, during, and after the contracts are signed -- what the rules of engagement will be. If you don't want to see or hear the campaigning, then you need to let them know that and chastise their senior management when they do.

But ground rules will only take you so far, and if you haven't hired an agency that knows how to play well with others, you're going to be in for bumpy ride, which means that even before you set the ground rules, you have to seek out the right kind of agency partner.

If a firm already has existing strategic partnerships, this bodes well for them being willing to share the sandbox with others. A smart agency realizes they can't be the best in every area, and a focused agency will usually want to work on that which they know they can produce superior results.

Chemistry counts, but chemists aren't needed
Nearly all great teams have some level of chemistry. But whether you're talking about the chemistry between your staff and your agency, or the relationship between your various agencies, it is possible to go overboard. And in fact, some CMOs tend to focus too much on chemistry.

Chemistry is probably [the] No. 1 [thing a CMO should look for in an agency. You've got to be able to work together. But don't let a personality glitch blind you to the attributes of an agency if you'll never have to work with that person.

When Agencies Should Defend In a Review

Understand the average: Your agency has a 95% chance of losing a review.

When to participate?

• Mandated reviews (e.g. government contracts; rules set by procurement or purchasing departments).
• Roster reviews.
• Agency consolidation reviews.
• When you have very strong, deep relationships and the results to back them up (and there's been no change in management).

When not to participate?

• When there are serious concerns (from either side) about the agency relationship or business performance.
• Management changes, particularly when you know that the incoming leadership has successfully worked with other agencies.
• Announcement of an unscheduled review.
• Announcement of a non-roster review.

Like the emotion of wanting to get even, defend yourself, or inflict equivalent harm that you might feel when thinking about sueing someone, it's easy to get caught up in the emotion of wanting to fight and "spend whatever it takes" to keep your hard-won or long-tenured client. However, the smart new business decision may well be to spend the money winning a new piece of business.

Optimizing Your Facebook Initiatives

Traditional search marketing holds that there are two ways to get search engine traffic. The first is to pay for it via pay-per-click advertising, and the second is to earn the traffic with optimal search engine placement. In the earned search marketing business of search engine optimization (SEO), a Facebook fan page is merely a web page, just like any other, except that it has the built-in benefit of residing on a very powerful domain. The same goes for YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Smart optimization, combined with the strong domains that house them, can propel your social media pages to the top of search engine results for relevant searches.

With that in mind, here are tips for optimizing your Facebook initiatives, as well as some brands that are getting it right.

Facebook
Quick tips for optimization:

Provide regular updates. Like most social media, a Facebook page is only as good as the content available for fans to interact with. Generally speaking, the more digital assets (videos, photos, etc.) the better. Provide regular updates (at least daily and preferably more, though this will depend on your niche) that encourage user participation. Respond to user feedback. To keep from falling behind, consider creating a calendar of updates at the beginning of each week or month.

Choose a good name for the page. The name of your Facebook page is arguably the most important early decision you will make because this is the very first thing the search engines will see when they visit your page. At the very least, you should include the name of the business. You might also include targeted keywords if appropriate.

Choose a good username. A username allows you to have a "clean" URL. For example, if you choose "dwaynejohnsonrocks" as your username, your page URL will be "www.facebook.com/dwaynejohnsonrocks." These URLs look nicer on business cards and letterhead, and they are easier to remember.

Vanity URLs, as they are called, also provide an opportunity for further optimization with your business name or a selected keyword. Given the choice between the two, the business name will be more appropriate in most cases.

Take advantage of the "about" box. The "about" box is a great place to include relevant content and keyword-rich descriptions. This is one of the only places on a page's "wall" that allows for fully customized copy to be written. Many pages use this space to simply provide a link back to the corporate website or place their tagline, but it is an ideal place to help the search engines understand more about your page.

Customize your page. Facebook allows for a moderate amount of customization. You can't change backgrounds or otherwise skin the page, but you can completely customize other things. For example, you have a large degree of control over how your tabs appear. In addition to adding unique content inside "boxes," you can frame a page hosted elsewhere, which allows for full control over the look and feel of that particular tab (within the confines of the Facebook page that surrounds it, of course).

A customized page immediately communicates credibility to the user and also shows a commitment to your brand's involvement with not only Facebook but also social media as a whole.

Who did it great
Threadless
The online T-shirt company Threadless has been active in social media since its inception. Its business model of printing user-submitted and user-voted designs requires an environment that encourages feedback and user interaction.

The Importance of an “Agency of Record"

If getting the most of your agencies means harnessing the power of collaboration to bring about an environment where the big idea can come from anyone, it would seem that a brand has two clear choices. On the one hand, it can use one agency (perhaps calling it an agency of record) to lead all other agencies. On the other hand, the brand can choose to forgo the agency of record and instead manage its agency teams directly.

While either approach may lead to a collaborative environment (since the dawn of digital, agencies have come a long way toward working together) brands that opt to go without an agency of record run the risk of forfeiting the strength of a knowledgeable partner capable of thinking about the client's strategic interests.

The concept of an agency of record remains vitally important for major advertisers and marketers, agencies of record provide continuity, stability, and efficiencies that one-off, ad hoc, or project partners simply can't meet.

The notion of an agency of record that drives the strategy and the brand is more vital now than ever. But traditional agency revenue models where money is made on production and media commission is waning. And that means that someone ultimately must take responsibility for the brand's strategic vision.

A brand also needs people on the inside who understand what marketing is and how it works, and who live, eat, and sleep your brand. These are the nuts-and-bolts people who will move your business forward. They're the CMOs of tomorrow, but today they're trying to prove themselves and (hopefully) trying to learn as much as they can about marketing.

Why agencies lose clients...

When you ask seasoned agency executives why they lose clients, you hear a multitude of reasons. The agency's client changed and the new client came in and cleaned house; the agency paid poor attention to budgets and timelines, or their strategic ideas, creative, and execution fell below client standards; the client feels they have "outgrown" the agency and they need a new agency with fresh ideas. Alternately, the client left because of the agency's arrogance and intransigence. And so on...

Though all these are potential reasons, the overarching foundational reason agencies lose clients is that they do not adequately satisfy the clients' basic human needs. Their basic human needs for food, safety and love -- yes, you read it right -- and their basic needs for esteem and self-fulfillment.

Understanding that all clients' needs at their core are basic human needs and passionately fulfilling those needs is the key to keeping most clients an agency would have lost. You must repurpose your agency's strategy, people, operation and processes to meet those basic needs to enjoy increased client retention.

In our client-agency relationship and process improvement work with interactive, direct marketing, branding, promotions, advertising and PR companies we have identified what clients need from agencies [see list in figure below]. If you compare those needs to the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you find that "excellent ideas and delivery," "value for money," and "meet my goals," map to the clients physiological need for food. The "responsiveness" and "develop fast solutions" requirements map to the client's safety needs. Continuing, the "good to work with" and "understand my business" requirements map to the client's desire to fulfill their need to belong.

You may not agree with the specifics in this example, and may want to build a Clients Need Map that best reflects your clients' specific requirements. The key insight is that your clients, at a deep psychological level, want to satisfy their basic human needs.

We have found in our client-agency relationship and process improvement work that agencies with a laser-beam focus on delivering those needs well tend to keep their clients a lot longer than those that do not. The secret reason your agency is losing clients unnecessarily is that there is not enough leadership focus and emphasis on this concept and its execution, and that your agency's strategy, personal, operation, and processes are not yet geared towards achieving this goal. Let's take a look at how to remedy the problem.

Building a solid foundation
First, you must understand your client's lower and higher order needs. For example, think back and remember your favorite pizza or ice cream place. You always go back there because of the taste of the product. You may even drive past several of their competitors to get to your preferred vendor. They are meeting your lower order needs. For some people, the key need could be taste, good service, ambience, or belongingness (a key attractor for Starbucks customers). For others it could be "value for money."

In the ad/marketing services world, a key lower order need might be "fast execution" or "be very responsive." Therefore, you must start by identifying the client's priorities for these most basic needs, and put a plan in place to meet them in a consistent manner, right from the start. No matter how well a company is doing in delivering the clients higher order needs, if they fail to meet consistently the lower order needs, they will lose the client.

In the same vein, if the agency wins all sorts of industry awards that the client is genuinely proud of (higher order "esteem' need met) but fails to drive volume or awareness (lower order needs not met) will the client keep using them?

Finding the lower order needs
The clients lower order needs are those that fundamentally must be met. They are the results that the client wants from you and why they hired your agency in the first place. If the agency continues to perform poorly in meeting those lower order needs, the client will definitely fire the agency.

There are two types of lower order needs. The first are the types of needs that are no big deal when you meet them, which I call the "no big deal if met" client needs. The second are the types of needs that the client is happier the more of them they get, which I call the "get more the better" client needs.

The "no big deal if met" client needs. The "no big deal if met" client needs are those that the client expects you to meet without them necessarily requesting that they be met. They are customary and normal needs that must be met in a relationship. For example, the client expects you to give them a bill or invoice for the services you provided, or a statement of account telling them how their budget was spent.

Just like when you stay in a hotel or go out to dinner, you get a bill. It should not be a big deal for the business to give you a bill, an invoice, or a statement of account. It is an expected, customary, and normal part of the day-to-day engagement.

You get no kudos for meeting the "no big deal if met" client needs. However, you will get a lot of grief if they are poorly met. Have you ever stayed in a hotel and while checking out you found that your bill was wrong? Did you feel they were doing you a favor when they corrected it? No. They just wasted your time for something that should have been correct in the first place. They won't get any kudos for billing you correctly, but chances are you'll remember if they messed up on something as simple as this. Similarly, no matter how creative or strategic an agency might be, a client will eventually fire an agency if they continue to perform poorly on meeting these basic expectations.

The "get more the better" client needs. The "get more the better" is another form of basic client needs normally agreed upon in the day-to-day working relationship with an agency. For example, in a client agency briefing, if an agency committed to providing three concepts and not only delivered these on time but shared two additional ideas for looking at the marketing challenge, they are meeting a "get more the better" need. The more of it the client gets, the more satisfied they become -- to a reasonable limit, of course.

For the same budget, by giving the clients more concepts than they expected, you are leveraging the "get more the better" concept. Delivering what was promised earlier than promised or for much less than the agreed upon budget are other examples of "get more the better" client needs. By understanding your client's "get more the better" needs and strategically giving them more than expected, where appropriate, you can significantly deepen your relationship with the client.

Just as with the "no big deal if met" client needs, you get no kudos for just meeting the "get more the better" client needs. However, by going beyond what is expected, the client will likely appreciate your thoughtfulness, your creativity, and see you as a proactive partner who is working harder to make them more successful. It does not necessarily cost you more to deliver additional "get more the better" needs.

Determining higher order needs
Determining the higher order needs -- esteem and self-actualization -- may be a little more complicated. For example, a client that relies on your agency for "strategic counsel" and for "creative that makes their brand famous" is looking to meet a higher order needs with your services.

Please note that a lower order need for a client working with an agency may be a higher order need with another agency. For example, the "strategic counsel" need may be a lower order when the client works with a large, top-of-the-line ad agency. However, the same client working with a promotions company may classify this as a higher order need since they already have a primary agency to do the strategic counseling.

Mapping client needs
To determine your clients' lower and higher order needs, try building your own Client Needs Map for each one. When doing this, remember that higher order needs contain numerous esteem and self-fulfillment needs and, in some cases, they can become very personal. It may be helpful to split the higher order needs to "formal" and "informal" needs. A "formal" higher order need is mostly a client's company need; while an "informal" higher order need is very personal to the client you work with directly.

An esteem need, such as, "drives my volumes and brand awareness while winning agency awards," or "creative that makes our brand famous," which can be shared with appropriate persons within the client's organization, is an example of a "formal" need.

On the other hand, an "informal" higher order self-fulfillment need, could be something like, "the agency's work must help me get promoted." I hope you would agree that it is best to keep such very personal needs confidential. For example, one of my clients, a director of a large consumer packaged goods company, was promoted to VP because of the high-impact improvement work we completed. We recognized that the self-fulfillment need of "to be promoted as a result of the improvement work" is an informal client need.

Meeting higher order needs to reinforce your relationship
Naturally, you should focus on meeting the lower order needs first, and use meeting the higher order needs as "icing on the cake." No matter how well a company is doing in meeting the higher order needs, if they fail in delivering the lower order needs well, they will, over time, be fired by the client.

The process:
Losing a client is particularly painful at this time of economic hardship, so ad/marketing services companies and interactive agency leaders can use this model to plug those avoidable client losses, now.

In a nutshell, start the process by auditing your current joint client-agency relationship and processes to identify what is working well and what is not. Next, map what your clients need from your agency, and the hierarchy of those needs. Then identify the gaps in meeting those needs and develop solutions and strategies to close the gaps. After that, roll out agreed solutions after proper testing. Finally, use performance tracking and effective client-agency change management to sustain the client retention strategies you implemented.

Now, take a look at how to execute those steps in more detail.

Step 1: Conduct relationship and process audit
Determine your clients' lower and higher order needs and how they map to the hierarchy of needs.

Is your company's operation set up primarily for business "hunting" or "farming"? It is best to balance the two; for example, a business model geared towards farming that spends significant agency resources on acquisition may not have the bandwidth and good supportive processes for keeping clients they acquire for a very long time.

- How strong is the chemistry between the agency teams and the client teams? How can you tell the chemistry is working?
- Are your work practices and processes geared to delivering the client's basic needs, and doing them very well, such that the client never entertains leaving the agency? What are the sources and causes of client dissatisfaction in your work processes and practices?
- Are your practices good at meeting the clients' budget and timeline requirements?
- Are they good for executing flawlessly?
- How would your clients score you on caring and being very responsive to their needs? How well would you score on whether they would recommend you to a colleague?

Step 2: Prepare a client needs map
Through the relationship and process audits, you discovered the low and higher order needs of each of your clients, which could vary significantly among them. However, most clients will expect you to meet their goals, provide excellent ideas and delivery, understand their business, be responsive to their needs, develop solutions fast, and give them value for their money.

With this information in mind, prepare the lower and higher order maps for each of your clients.

Step 3: Close gaps in lower order needs
To be effective, you must focus on the most important lower order needs first. A transformative understanding and appreciation of basic human needs, and how to meet those needs effectively, is critical to retaining your clients.

When an agency fundamentally understands the client's basic needs, from the top down, the whole agency operation, strategy and processes become repurposed around understanding, identifying, delivering and tracking how well those basic needs are met. This type of agency is equipped to consistently meet these needs, and will likely start enjoying significant increases in client retention and win-backs.

Step 4: Uncover and deliver higher order needs
The very first step in meeting the higher order needs is to be sure the agency is already meeting the clients' lower order needs consistently.

Next, develop a strategy for delighting the client through meeting their higher order needs. Revisit the higher order needs you previously identified in the relationship and process audit, and then develop strategies for delivering them.

Step 5: Test solutions and strategies
Though cast in a hierarchical form, all client requirements must be delivered simultaneously to keep the client happy. To test solutions and strategies, start with the lower order needs and make sure they are being met. Then progress to higher order needs.

Key questions to ask as you do your testing:
- How often does the agency fail to meet the timelines promised?
- How well expected campaigns results are achieved (increased brand awareness, increased sales, etc)?
- Does the client feel they are spending all this money with the agency but not executing enough campaigns or driving required results, no matter the reasons?
- To what degree does the client see value in their working with your agency?

Step 6: Training and rollout
Train key employees and account leaders on the solutions and strategies you have developed. Then, train key stakeholders on how to manage the client relationship so they can progressively improve the economic performance of the agency and the client.

The training should cover:
- How your account teams can turn problems into opportunities
- How to understand and fulfill all basic client requirements (lower and higher order needs, formal and informal needs)
- How to execute your client work fast and flawlessly
- How to measure performance and drive changes in behaviors, with client and agency organizations, required to improve results
- Ultimately, how to focus on giving the client more with less

Step 7: Track and take corrective action
Track and take corrective action on how well the agency is meeting all identified needs. As you do this, recognize that your agency must be passionate about being strategically aligned with the client. Be clear about what this entails and how to live it credibly by passing decisions through that screen.

In addition, the agency must be an enthusiastic brand steward for the client. Know the brand so well that you become the source of knowledge about the brand for any of your clients' new and transferred marketing managers.

Making A Brand Relevant In Social Media

There are two components to advertising in the broader sense. One is the content that you manufacture, and the second is the channel and method you use to distribute that content. My sense is that the issue here is one of distribution and manufacture. So from a manufacturing point of view, the messaging that sums up the message of brands and even creates them is in a state of very, very rapid evolution. It's in a state of evolution in a number of dimensions -- in terms of the duration of messages, the formats of messages, and everything that goes with that. The world is not doing badly in terms of involving that manufacture. So that's a good thing. And the good thing for the agency business and the creative community, if you like, is that there has never been a bigger demand for more granular messaging to go in different formats.

The purpose of brand communication -- pretty much above everything else -- is to create social relevance for brands. What social relevance means is having a substantial cohort of the population, or certainly a big enough cohort of the population that justifies the cost of whatever it is you were planning to do in the first place -- that knows what the brand is, like it, feel it's relevant, and that is suitably exposed to it. That's what social relevance is. You still need to do that. So the question is: Has the bar for social relevance gone up? Yes, it has, and so the way you do that is to create a platform of some description, and you build social relevance around that platform.

Where can digital fill in the holes that traditional often leaves behind or completely ignores?
Digital fills holes in a couple of ways. The first thing it does is it helps by replacing the reach that's lost by the somewhat diminished use of other channels. But what digital really does is break the relationship between cost and duration. One of the reasons why the structure of the market was positioned the way it was in the old world is because it was limited either by the number of pages the magazine publisher could use to print and distribute and carry around on trucks, or the amount of spectrum that was owned by a broadcaster, and so forth. So the industry was capped before. When you think about advertising, think about it in two ways. Part of it simply pushes visibility into the market, and another part is much more directional. And what that direction is doing is taking people from a fairly superficial form of contact into the opportunity to engage much more deeply with that content.

U.S. Hispanics Repesent 10% of the Online Market

True to its reputation as a "melting pot," the U.S. boasts an increasingly large Hispanic population -- the implications of which, when it comes to advertising, go far beyond a language barrier. A recent report from Pew Hispanic Center stated that U.S. Hispanics have represented more than half of U.S. population growth since 2000.

Marketers may have been tempted in the past to ignore this group -- or, at the least, did little to tailor messaging to it -- but it is no longer financially wise to do so. According to a 2008 comScore survey on U.S Hispanics online, 5 percent of U.S. born and 17 percent of foreign-born Hispanics said they pay more attention to online video ads than TV spots, and 17 percent and 26 percent, respectively, find them more engaging than TV ads. The same survey also states that 13 percent of U.S. born and 22 percent of foreign-born Hispanics said they are more likely to respond to ads targeted to Hispanics.

The comparison of TV and online advertising as it relates to response rates should be viewed in context of the language barrier. In the U.S., there are television networks such as Univision, which are broadcast in Spanish and include direct cultural relevance to Hispanic audiences. These types of channels are certainly not the only ones that Spanish-speaking audiences may view, but they are a specific destination on television where they know they can see programming in their language. Similarly, the internet is a much vaster marketplace, but those same types of destinations exist, even though Spanish-language sites are not the only ones viewed by Hispanic audiences.

As more ad dollars shift to this growing segment of the U.S. population, those destinations will become in-demand (i.e., expensive) online inventory for marketers. So how do you reach out to other cultures in an effective and cost-efficient way?

Behavioral targeting can help marketers reach across the cultural divide, helping to identify Hispanic online audiences, or any other ethnic group for that matter, and deliver messaging that is relevant to not only their language, but also their overall culture. It can also expand the inventory marketers use to reach Hispanic audiences.

Behavioral targeting is used to create Hispanic audience segments first based on users who have visited Spanish-language sites or any sites with Hispanic-relevant content. You can then create sub-segments based on not only ethnicity, culture, or language, but also interests and purchase intent behaviors observed on those or other sites. You can even identify "purchase influencers" among U.S. Hispanic populations, based on browsing and buying behaviors plus geographic location. You may then serve culturally relevant marketing messages to these segments when they travel to any other site online.

You will also find re-targeting useful, once you have begun to build these behavioral segments. As you serve ads to your Hispanic audiences and sub-segments, you can then re-target them across whichever network or sites you choose, with upsell, cross-sell, or discount offers. As a marketer, make sure you're making the most out of these types of programs by using bilingual creative, or messages in Spanish, with themes and designs that will resonate with a Hispanic audience.

Finally, ensure that you are integrating your marketing into these segments with your other media programs. With your search program, you can strengthen your segments by layering your behavioral data with your search data. Behavioral profiles that have been tagged as part of a Hispanic audience or sub-segment can be given a boost by search data including Spanish-language or Hispanic content keywords or search engines that have been set to Spanish.

Consumer education is a challenge no matter what language you're speaking or audience you're trying to reach. If you decide to embark on a Hispanic-focused BT campaign, ensure that your privacy policies are clearly communicated in both languages on your site, as well as any type of opt-out or opt-in functions you provide.

According to SMG Multicultural CEO Monica Gadsby, 19.5 million U.S. Hispanics are online, 70 percent of Hispanic women are online, and Hispanics make up 10 percent of all online users. This might be a significant portion of your potential customer pool, and reaching out to them can be just as easy as reaching out to any audience segments, with a few process and creative changes. Based on its ability to accurately segment audiences, behavioral targeting is by far the most efficient way to market to the Hispanic population. And remember, these same principles can be applied to any cultural group that you want to reach out to in the country.