I received an email this morning from someone calling themselves “US Commerce Association” awarding us the “Best of Chichester, Internet Service” award.  Now, 1., we moved out of Chichester, NY over 4 years ago.  2., Chichester is a tiny little burg.  There are NO Internet Service companies there.  There is a terrific yoga studio, however, a glass-blowing studio, and some wonderful streams and mountains.

So, are these guys a fraud?  Well, when I clicked on the email to see about claiming my lovely hunk of lucite, I had to fill out an info form, and finally, this:

This piece is dedicated to Molly and Stacy. Molly is eleven years old. Stacy is a devoted mother of three youngsters and an active participant in important community affairs in the small town where I live. What they have in common is gluten intolerance.

That’s where web based marketing comes in. General Mills has been rolling out its product line to meet the needs of this population segment for over a year. On July 2, they announced that they would promote it without relying on their mainstay advertising campaign based on broadcast and the like.

Gluten intolerance affects a small portion of population, so this will not be a mass market line. But, sufferers will seek answers somewhere. And these days most of us use the web as a primary destination for health research. If you’re like me, at the first hint of pain or fever, you rush to ohmygodimdying.com and search on the symptoms.

So, General Mills sees the value in using non-traditional channels to build a following and then provide information. Will a community of interest grow around this, with all the elements – forums, targeted offerings, advice and all sorts of multi-directional conversations? Will it provide General Mills with the major market share in this niche line, and with a loyal customer segment? How much penetration of the market will they achieve, over what period of time, and at what cost for marketing and promotion? I am sure marketing and communications professionals will watch how this turns out. Let’s see what other CPG companies do in the way of focused, high impact digital programs.

For Molly, Stacy and many others, the chance to live unhindered by this malady will be welcome. Maybe that will be the best metric of all.

Just some random thoughts to be fleshed out more later.
What is the probability that someone will do business with your company?
Many different factors contribute to the buying decision. In this document, I will attempt to quantify the different influencers, in able to better identify the potential influence of social media, and thus, identify an ROI for Social Media.
3 Areas of Influence
There are three areas that influence the purchasing decision (I use the phrase ‘purchasing decision’ in a global way, meaning also the decision to hire a service provider as well as the seller of goods):
1. Awareness
2. Value
3. Trust
Awareness
Awareness is de rigueur. A customer cannot buy your product or service if they are not aware of its existence.
In EMyth Mastery, Michael Gerber shows the Purchase Decision Chain as beginning with awareness.
Do they know you exist?
There are X amount of potential customers in my market (see Market Expansion).
How is ‘Awareness’ different than ‘Brand Awareness’?
Value
The value that a potential customer may desire in a product or service will vary. Value propositions tend to be a mix of attributes, such as cost, quality, and timeliness. Depending on competition, a potential customer does not need to have a perfect value match with your offering – it might be that if they are in the right zone, it is enough.

Trust

What is the influence of Trust on the purchasing decision?
Given customer awareness (they know about us!), and a perfect Value fit in an environment where there are other providers of the product or service that have a perfect Value fit, what is the influence of Trust

Market Expansion

Your market might be x% of the total population, or might be 100% of a specific population.
Model Train buyers might represent 0.001% of the entire population, but your target market . The distribution through the gross population, though, is not smooth. Your market could be 100% of that specific population.

Social Media Influence

Can influence Awareness

Can influence Trust

Ever wonder if an organization is selling their email list?  If you have Gmail, you can append a tag to your email address, which could help you, later on, determine that someone is up that nefarious practice.

Gmail doesn’t offer traditional aliases, but you can receive messages sent to your.username+any.alias@gmail.com. For example, messages sent to jane.doe+notes@gmail.com are delivered to jane.doe@gmail.com.You can set up filters to automatically direct these messages to Trash, apply a label or star, skip the inbox, or forward to another email account.

I had to spend a chunk of time reviewing luxury ecommerce websites for features.  I came up with this matrix:

This one is for musicians – but equally for those seeking their inner musician.

http://www.indabamusic.com/

I was recently working on some Social Networking for a local non-profit, The Trailmix Concert Series, and was remeinded of our work int he music industry.  Our portfolio of sites for the music industry has grown quite a bit:

• Glimmerglass Opera
• Jeanie Bryson | Coleman Mellett
• Trailmix Music Series
• Happy Traum
• Homespun Tapes

A couple weeks ago, I read an article in a venerable business magazine about the growing use of digital readers and what that might mean for newspaper and magazine publishers. These devices offer the potential to maintain or grow paid circulation as the traditional print readership dwindles. The author expressed some concern that publishers would have trouble adopting a distribution model that entailed offering subscriptions via an open platform that could download competing publications.

Is that a valid concern? I don’t think so. Publishers offer that now. It is called the newsstand for single copy sales and subscription promotion for mail delivery. In each case, the reader buys because of the value (s)he attaches to the brand. Subscription via e-reader seems a natural extension, if the technology is widely available before print publishers have scaled back their editions due to declining circulation and advertising revenue.

By now we all know about the problem of free content on the web and how publishers hurt themselves by taking that path in the 1990s. But most people don’t read newspapers and magazines in depth on computers. It isn’t a fully comfortable experience. That is still a benefit of print – more control, less hurry – engagement. That is where the e-readers or similar portable devices can come in, by allowing us to maintain familiar and comfortable habits.

I suppose that most people who read newspapers and magazines still do so while commuting or relaxing at home. There may not be a better way to take in serious journalism. So, the e-reader can be a suitable replacement for paper and ink. The engineers are working to improve resolution of the devices. But there is another barrier to overcome if the e-reader subscription is to work. There has to be enough affordable download capacity for a subscriber to plug in the reader, log in, load the paper and head off to the bus, train or subway. Use can’t be locked into a page at a time online setting.

If we can get to that point (before publishers run out of cash), I think advertisers will follow, especially since they’ll be able to load more creative ads than they can in hard copy. Those ads may also record demographic metrics if they are marked by readers for further exploration, whether on or off line. Loyal readers will pay for the content (although it will replace the hard copy.) A loyal, defined paid circulation base plus measurable ad interaction will likely have value for advertisers.

Of course, there is still one problem, as a friend of mine pointed out — what will I use to start the fire in my wood stove? I can’t roll up and burn an e-reader.