Custer, Coke And Conan 

Every so often, someone asks me how to set up an effective social media marketing program in the multifamily housing sector. They expect me to tick off a list of specific activities that have worked for my company, AvalonBay Communities. That’s enough, they think, to start up a good, effective social media marketing strategy. After all, why not just do the same things that others have already done successfully? It seems like a nice shortcut to success— something we marketing professionals always seem to be looking for.

That’s where the 3 C’s—Custer, Coke and Conan—come in. All are good examples of having no strategy, a poor strategy or a good strategy that was poorly executed. Take Gen. George Armstrong Custer. He definitely had a vision, but not much of a strategic plan. He was a charismatic leader who inspired fierce loyalty and commitment. When he said, “There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Calvary,” his men fervently believed it.

Custer is a good example of the mistake of substituting vision (and a flawed one at that) for strategy. Relying on his vision of the invincible Seventh, he refused to bring Gatling guns into battle and declined Gen. Terry’s offer of additional troops. Custer’s fundamentally flawed assumptions resulted in a cascading series of poor tactical decisions. We all know how that turned out for him and 268 of his men.

Unlike Custer, who simply had no strategy, Coca-Cola in 1985 had a strategy that was, unfortunately, based upon insufficient data. With market share eroding against arch-rival Pepsi, Coke decided to launch New Coke. A great deal of marketing research went into the development of New Coke, and blind taste tests indicated that it would be a public favorite. But within three months of the new product launch, the company was forced to return to the original Coke
formula.

What happened? A strategy built primarily on blind taste test data simply didn’t take into consideration the dogged loyalty of traditional Coke drinkers. There just wasn’t enough good data and information upon which to build a successful strategy. We’re still drinking Classic Coke today.

The Conan O’Brien-Jay Leno-NBC fiasco is an example of a seemingly good strategy going bad because it wasn’t modified in the face of new information. In 2004, with Jay Leno at the top of his game in the late-night talk show space, NBC announced a succession plan that would take effect in 2009. Based upon the best demographic information then available, the strategy envisioned Leno’s audience aging and giving way, within five years, to Conan’s younger demographic cohort. After all, NBC had successfully transitioned from Tom Brokaw to Brian Williams with this same strategy and was confident it would work with Leno and Conan.

But when 2009 rolled around, the demographic predictions hadn’t panned out. Instead, Leno’s audience had declined only slightly and Conan’s had made no real headway. Rather than scrapping the strategy that was no longer supported by the data, NBC barreled ahead. The only concession to reality was giving Jay Leno a show at 10 p.m. as a lead-in to Conan. In less than two years, it all came undone. What was good for Brokaw and Williams failed miserably for Leno and Conan.

So what do the 3 C’s tell us about social media? A lot, I think. Don’t try to implement marketing or business plans without a strategy. Make sure that your marketing plans are based on a well-thought out and well-researched strategy, not merely mimicking someone else’s effort. And remember, a strategy is a living and growing approach to business, and it has to be modified to reflect changing realities.

The Art of Planning

Developing the right strategy is key to an effective social media program, but it is not enough on its own. Sun Tzu, the great Chinese thinker, said, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, but tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” An effective social media program requires attention to both sides of the equation: strategy and tactics. Before marketers in the multifamily housing industry decide that social media is right for their company, they should keep in mind a number of critical points.

1. Strategic marketing is not about your products anymore. If your marketing approach is designed to only push product (apartment units) instead of engaging potential renters, you’re in trouble from the get-go. Effective marketing today must be primarily concerned with serving customers and maximizing the lifetime engagement of customers with the company, not with driving individual transactions. Being customer-centric means that communicating with existing and potential customers is a tailored, two-way street. It means recognizing that the company doesn’t really “own” the brand—customers do, and at best we can influence their views. Keeping these points in mind, social media’s importance becomes much clearer.

2. Think about social media in the context of your company’s corporate culture and business plan. Effective social media requires senior management’s understanding and buy-in. Many senior executives don’t understand the first thing about social media sites, except perhaps that their teenage children have Facebook accounts. Educating top executives about the marketing possibilities of social media is an important early step. Further, embarking on a social media program means that senior management and marketing professionals must be willing to allow the company to “be social.” This means giving up exclusive control of the message; it means sharing brand control with customers; it means “allowing” customers to talk freely, and not always nicely, about the brand. Early on, make sure that your company culture and business approach will support these “listen and engage” elements of social media.

3. Make sure you have the stamina for the long haul. Don’t confuse a social media effort with, for example, a traditional print advertising campaign. Once you go down the social media road, you cannot simply and easily go back. It isn’t like launching an ad campaign, getting the market feedback and then deciding that you’ll never do that again! Social media is effective because it engages customers in a conversation. This very strength, the interaction between company and customer, is why it is virtually impossible to simply turn off the spigot without potentially serious negative ramifications among your customer base. Be mindful of the risk: once you create a presence in social media, there’s no going back. So, make sure that you have the support of your management and the appropriate resources to start and pursue for the long-term social media program.

4. Don’t do social media because “everyone else is doing it.” Apart from making sure that a social media program fits into your corporate culture and business strategy, be certain that the demographics, geography, and other factors support your decision. You need an audience in social media, so your marketing data should tell you that, once you begin an outreach, you will have a receptive base of customers who use and are proficient with Internet tools and with whom you can build sustaining and engaging relationships. Remember, when it comes to getting your company’s name out in the social community, the good news is: It’s easy to create a presence. And the bad news is: It’s easy to create a presence.

Six Social Media Considerations

Once a company decides that a social media program is right for them, there are a number of issues that must be considered as that plan is developed. It’s a recipe for disaster, as we have seen, to mindlessly charge into the tactical execution of a poorly thought out plan or to implement a series of activities simply copied from other companies. Instead, take some time to sit with your marketing teams and think about a few important questions.

• Have you maximized your online strategy? Before determining your exact social media approach, make sure that you have maximized all other elements of your online strategy. For example, a company’s website is a fundamental online marketing tool. It should first be fully leveraged through a solid Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign. Search Engine Marketing (SEM/pay-per-click) should also be a consideration to follow SEO. Once you have a solid SEO and SEM foundation, only then should you consider adding a Social Media Optimization (SMO) program to your overall marketing strategy.

• Which social media should you focus on first? All sites are not created equal, and some are simply more important to a company’s particular circumstances than others. Your marketing team should have a good understanding and experience of the various types of social media: networking sites, blogs, micro-blogs, media-sharing sites, video sites and photo sites. Ask yourself which is important to your company and why. Some sites are more cost effective than others. Google’s blending/universal search takes into account a site’s trust reputation, authority and page rank, with video and Twitter showing in the search results. While mobile search accounts for only 3 percent of all Internet searches (StatsCounter, June 2010), mobile technology still has great service value for multifamily housing industry customers for tasks such as online maintenance requests and rent payment. You just need to decide which social tactics work best for your company, your goals, your customer and your budget.

• Do you have content and how will you generate it? Building the two-way engagement between customer and company that is the hallmark of social media is dependent on meaningful and relevant content. Customers will not engage you in conversation if your content is nothing more than corporate spin or propaganda. Be willing to generate useful information, like the top 10 tips for finding an apartment or the latest entertainment options in the local neighborhood. To be attractive to customers, content has to be entertaining and engaging, as well as current and fresh. Employing “exclusive” incentives for social media use is another tool that drives customer eyes and maintains “stickiness.” Generating good content requires focus and resources. Think about whether you should assign an internal marketing person or an outside agency to this task. Both work effectively, and the choice depends entirely upon the individual company’s culture and approach.

• How will you effectively maintain your social media presence? Apart from generating and posting useful content, companies must determine their approach to monitoring and responding to customers in a timely manner. Expectations for social media responses make even e-mail look slow, so a rapid reply system must be in place. This entails training associates, establishing social media protocols and determining whether the response team will be internal, external or some combination of both.

• How will you encourage customer participation and interaction? Most Twitter accounts (73 percent) have less than 10 tweets, and a substantial percentage of individuals who register for Twitter never once return to the site. Naturally, customer engagement requires good content, but social media is not just a “build it and they will come” reality. Awareness campaigns are critical in driving participation and recognition of the existence of your social media sites, and this requires both internal and external resources. You should factor this into your social media budget or you may be left with terrific sites that no one knows about.

• How will you measure success? Like most measurements of human activity, social media is best viewed both qualitatively and quantitatively. There are several social media tracking and monitoring companies that provide good reads on the extent and type of social media mentions. In most instances, for larger companies, this is a necessary data point. In addition, it can be instructive to analyze customer comments and interaction, resident referral trends, onsite resident satisfaction surveys, search engine ranks, and correlative trends between social web activity and consumer activity. Taken together, these approaches can give you a fairly good indication of whether your social media strategy is working or not.

Lessons Learned

If Custer, Coke and Conan teach us nothing except that “a poor strategy will give you the same results as a good strategy poorly executed,” then that would be plenty. As pervasive and compelling as social media is, no self-respecting marketing professional would charge blithely into the ethereal fray without careful consideration. We are well beyond the novelty phase of social media. Whether we like it or not, our brands are being defined every day in new ways by participants in this new media channel.

Smart brands recognize that to meet this challenge they
need an approach that puts decisions about social media into
a broad strategic and tactical context. Generations before the Internet even existed, great thinkers and doers like Winston Churchill recognized the importance of this seamless connection between strategy and tactics. Churchill once said, “No matter how beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” Not bad advice in the age of social media.

B. Kevin Thompson is Vice President, Marketing and Communications, at AvalonBay Communities Inc. You can follow him on Twitter (AvalonMarketing) or via e-mail at MarketingGuy@AvalonBay.com. 

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