Here at Canyon, we like to think of ourselves as an extension of our B2B clients.  Essentially, our mission is one and the same – to provide a sustainable competitive advantage in a crowded market by developing creative marketing campaigns and strong branding initiatives.  In order to achieve this, we work closely with our clients to build strategies based on creating a unique value proposition (UVP) for the company. 

Your UVP should be built around your strongest resources and core competencies and should dictate the types of products and services your company develops, not the other way around.  For example, if your firm’s core competency is centered on excellent customer service, then your UVP should focus on that resource and be communicated in every aspect of your brand’s messaging.  In order for your UVP to continually provide value for your customers, it must align with the firm’s resources and core competencies and pass the following VRIS test:

Valuable – This test is kind of a no-brainer in shaping your UVP.  In order to provide your customers with the high-value products and services they crave, your most valuable resources need to be utilized to their fullest capacity because they relate directly to the end product or service you are selling.  This not only allows your firm to find a unique position in the market, but it also builds a strong brand reputation and enhances brand equity.

Rare – Uncommon, unusual, exceptional; no matter how you spin it, your unique value proposition must be, well, unique!  Make sure your firm’s strongest assets offer something different than your competitors.  If not, you are just another player that has the potential to get lost in the shuffle. 

Inimitable – While the name of this test gives “calculable” a run for its money in the “hard-to-say-words contest,” the concept is simple.  A company’s resources are almost never impossible to imitate.  Eventually, as successful firms’ resources become more exposed, they can be more easily imitated by competitors.  So the key isn’t necessarily making resources and core competencies impossible to copy; but rather ensuring that they are so ingrained and interwoven within the firm’s daily functions that they become very difficult or costly to imitate. 

Non-substitutable – Don’t let the name fool you.  Although the first letter of this test doesn’t necessarily match its corresponding letter in the VRIS acronym, having a product or service that is non-substitutable is a key component in determining whether your UVP provides you with a sustainable advantage over your competition. 

Incorporating a strong unique selling proposition into your marketing communications is essential in creating a strong brand identity.  At the end of the day, the only way of truly satisfying customers is to offer them a highly valuable product or service that is valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable.

Being the “old lady” amongst the Canyonites, I got a few odd glances when reviewing my headline. Sigh. Then I attempted to explain the adage about the Cobbler’s Children having no shoes which didn’t really help make me appear any younger – or more relevant. 

Whether you know what a cobbler is  or even understand the reference, as a social marketer I am sure you’ve experienced times where you were not as connected or prolific as you ‘should be’. I am having one of those times. Canyon has been moving at an accelerated pace for all the right reasons – new clients, increased scopes, community engagement (BMA and Arizona Technology Council) –  yada, yada (now I am really giving away my age with a Seinfeld reference) – that we’ve neglected our blog.

So what is a digital marketer to do? 

1. Name it and claim it. Do not hide under the covers. Use the communications tools at your disposal. Respond and engage with authenticity and transparency – as you would in any face-to-face interaction when inadvertently putting your foot in your mouth. Affirming concerns, admitting uncertainties and promising to follow are better than deafening social media silence!
2. Rebuild the relationship. It may be appropriate to start with an apology. Then refocus on the values that built the (social media) relationship in the first place.
3. Get back on the horse and back to basics. Pay due attention to quality and consistency to reassure the relationship continues and prospers. 

It is comforting to know that we are not alone in our social media missteps. Kenneth Cole, the Red Cross and Southwest have all recently had some social media growing pains. Even savvy businesses and skilled b2b marketers -armed the best tools and social media playbooks- cannot 100% mitigate our collective humanity. And that’s ok.

The reality is that those embracing social media are going to make mistakes. And while it may be painful at times, the risk is worth the reward.

Since pleading mea culpa publically is our first step, I invite you to confess your social media gaffe –or call out someone else’s if you feel called. Come on…this is a community of peers, you are safe here. Besides, nobody can digitally hear you giggling (at our misstep).

Okay, so it’s a couple of days late (March 14, 2006) but I’ve never been good with dates (and I was tied up with Pi day, anyway*). So Monday was Twitter’s fifth birthday, and while the day passed relatively quietly online, Twitter released some absolutely astounding stats about their first five years in the social media playground.

Full disclosure – I lifted these stats directly from Twitter via Gizmodo, but I really like how they laid them out…

3 years, 2 months and 1 day: The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet. 

1 week: The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.

50 million: The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.

140 million: The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.

177 million:Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.

456: Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time).

6,939: Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day. (I tried to extrapolate that over an entire year of almost 7K TPS, but it made my calculator give me the E sign, something I hadn’t seen since middle school)

572,000: Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.

460,000: Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.

182 percent: Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.

Wow. A bit player five years ago (well, four years and 11 months ago) now dominates the new media landscape in a way no one could have possibly conceived of, with Twitter being a go-to resource for information about earthquakes and disaster relief, pump-ups, meltdowns, different kind of meltdowns, all the way through to its original intent – to bring people closer together through the sharing of thoughts, perspectives and opinion, all in 140 characters or less.

So what does Twitter mean for our B2B friends?

Like all social media platforms, Twitter is another way to engage your audiences and stakeholders, a useful conduit to connect you to the people you need to connect to. And its opt-in, opt-out ease forces B2B marketers to be even more astute in their content generation and placement, because it’s as easy to hit unfollow as it was to begin following in the first place.

But can you be strategic in 140 characters?

The way Twitter has set it up, once someone is following you, besides DMing you there’s really only two other things they can do to you – retweet you, and help spread the message, or unfollow. Your content is crucial, as it directly impacts your value to your audience stream. You need fresh, dynamic and engaging content for your core stakeholders (product info, links to case studies and videos, thought leadership perspectives, etc.) to ensure you’re offering your followers the latest and greatest (and to ensure you get more retweets than unfollows), but you cannot rely on Twitter to market for you.

Twitter allows you to be a part of the conversation, but if you try to monopolize it with marketing messages, you’re quickly going to be left behind (or worse, unfollowed). Instead, leverage your Twitter account to engage your stakeholders, making sure you are part of the right conversations, and be aware Twitter is just one part of your integrated marketing, PR and digital strategy. Twitter alone won’t make a sale for you, but as part of your suite of marcomm tools it will help you gain presence in the marketplace.

Ultimately, Twitter is another way to reach the people you need to reach with the information they need to have. Content is still king, but in the kingdom everyone has mobile phones and 140-character attention spans – and while it’s hard for some (okay, me) to accept that the game of content delivery has changed forever, the next step (after denial, of course) is recognizing the “nimbleness” required to adapt your content and strategy, not just to Twitter, for example, but to the next big thing.

So happy birthday Twitter! I can’t wait to see what has replaced you five years from now.

Is content still king in your world? How can Canyon’s digital guru help you reach your targets 140 characters at a time, and plug your business into a digital strategy to help you “be” social media?

*I’m a sucker for celebrating random days; I’m already looking forward to May 4!

With B2B marketing budgets reported to increase in online areas this year, we can expect to see a lot of web site improvements, more regular SEO updates and significant growth in the presence that businesses have in social media.

Web sites, SEO and social media all have one successful driver in common…content.  And while individually they have best practices for tone and format, the content must be engaging to your target audience.

As you are investing in your online resources, here are a few steps you can take to ensure your content stays relevant.

1. Research – Engage in quarterly research with new, existing and lost clients. Use your clients as a resource to gain insight into key decision factors and how the industry is changing based on their needs. Use this information to generate content for your web site, as a guide for discussions in social media and for SEO.
2. Test & Measure – Test and measure content to see how your target audience reacts to it. Google Analytics is just one great resource to measure web traffic, page views, click through rates and time spent on your web site. There are also analytic tools to measure the impact of your social media efforts.
3. Update – With content management systems like MODX and WordPress, updating web content is easy, so you can keep content relevant and engaging. When your web content calls for updating, don’t forget to update your SEO so that your audience can find you. Whether you are using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or a blog, successful social media also calls for consistently updated content. 
4. Repeat – Set a schedule and stick to it. Continue to evaluate, test & measure and update your content as needed so that your audience stays engaged longer and you are generating higher quality leads. 

Looking to get the best results from your online assets – contact Canyon today.  Our PR team and a digital team are ready to make your assets work for you!