Over-the-Virtual-Counter - The New Business Engagement Model

I have worked the counter at restaurants, retail shops, trade shows, and even an arcade back in the day when pinball was all the rage. And I can tell you from experience there is no better way to engage with your contacts, and cultivate rewarding relationships, than having that face to face "over-the-counter" discussion. Because they are expecting it.

Over-the-counter is such an established engagement model, we don't even realize we change our entire persona when we step into it. When you approach the counter, whether it's at a bank, an Apple store, or a chip wagon, you know the routine of back and forth and banter associated with the model. The shyness you typically have with strangers is lessened to a large degree. Your confidence goes up. You become purpose driven, and at the end of the engagement you expect a result.

For the experienced counter person, it's a slam dunk. You can do the job with one hand tied behind your back, it's such and established point of contact. And business knows this.

Business knows this is where the "rubber meets the road". That's why every counter person has been provided a pre-established script for up-selling, promoting , thanking, etc. In addition, staff regularly attend training sessions to improve their ability to engage with the customer or contact. Business spends billions every year to further the effectiveness of this point of contact.

But what about the virtual counter? Who's working that?

For most organizations, it's nobody.

For most organizations the virtual counter is nothing more than a box full of brochures and a box for visitors to drop their messages into. It's info and an email address. That's it. No back and forth. No banter. No effective engagement. A missed opportunity repeating itself over and over again, as each on-line visitor enters and leaves your site.

As a business manager, this would be the first thing you'd fix if it were a live situation. But it appears that most business are unaware of the engagement opportunities the web holds.

And it's not surprising. The over-the-counter engagement model has been around for centuries. This new Over-the-Virtual-Counter engagement opportunity is new, and the best way to approach the issue is largely uncharted territory.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, emailers etc. are the first of the new tools for over-the-virtual-counter engagement. They do a reasonably good job. But they can be an overburden as the number of places to engage keeps changing and increasing as new applications are developed.

Over-the-virtual-counter engagement will get better in time. My application, for one, is built to address that fact. But software alone will not resolve this issue. Business needs to do their part.

Organizations need to realize the capacity of the web to elicit participation from their audience. They need to realize on-line engagement can be just as effective as in person engagement. They need to realize that they can engage in live interaction. They need to realize that a new engagement model is emerging, and their competition might be on to it right now.

I'm working with StartUp Ottawa right now, being tasked with cleaning up and upgrading their directory of businesses. This past weekend I went through each of the couple of hundred businesses in the directory to compile a contact list. In doing so I visited each organization's website and soon discovered the "Just Info & Email" pattern. Some had a blog, some used social media, but almost all failed to invite participation. And thus the reason for my blog posting.

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Influence Marketing Strategies - The do's and don'ts

An old concept is being re-invented by the modern on-line community. Influence marketing has arguably been around since the birth of society, when someone first had something to sell. We called it "Word of mouth". Today, social networks make word of mouth far more reaching, faster, and if you're smart about it, the most effective influence marketing strategy ever witnessed.

The key is to be smart about it. And that's the rub. How can you learn to be smart about a technique that has so little empirical data to draw from?

Influence marketing in today's on-line marketplace, is different for every SMB. There is no single solution to finding the influencers that benefit an organization, or the perfect means to interact with them. Marketing tools that include mass emailers, cookies, squeeze pages and data trackers have popped up over the last several years claiming to assist. Many an article has been written about how best to use social media to advance an organization's on-line marketing effort. But if there is one approach that has seen more success over others, it is relationship building.

Building relationships and allowing those relationships to grow through social networks is today's word of mouth. Today's influence marketing. For an organization, it is cost effective and has arguably the best ROI of any marketing expenditure.

The important thing for an organization to keep in mind when trying to build an on-line relationship, is engagement. It sounds simple, but for the most part the only visitor engagement organizations cultivate on-line, are comments within blog postings and email interaction. Rarely does an organization follow up on comments and emails are not open to community interaction.

Too often SMB owners think "Top Down" when they post to the web or communicate with their contacts. Simply deliver information with no invitation to engage, and that is an opportunity lost.

The on-line community likes to contribute when asked. And they really like to share what they personally contribute. Especially if they feel their contribution means something to someone.

So give them the opportunity to contribute. As an SMB you should allow them to engage with you. Ask their opinion on subjects. Ask questions. Conduct discussion. Do everything you would do with a face to face customer.

Those that contribute with you will become high value contacts. Your relationships will be strengthened, and they will become your front line influence marketers as they share within their social networks.

Understanding your best approach to an effective influence marketing strategy is something that takes a bit of time. You need to acquire your own empirical data, and develop your own best practices from there. Whatever tools you choose to use, just ensure you are thinking "Bottom Up". Think about what your community would like to discuss. What they would like to contribute to. And you'll begin growing an influence marketing community.  

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