Metz, The Social Concept

How to Recruit Fans, Off-line

July 21, 2009

In my last post , I mentioned how I especially liked the techniques of embracing press negativity while bringing in new and/or “offline” (inactives ) users and customers. For some reason that struck a chord with many readers and I received numerous questions and requests for more ideas on how to get fans offline.

As one of the most prolific films of the modern era says, “Yeah, well. The Dude abides.”

I could point you to how some of the smartest guys in the tech world are attracting attention, but I won’t. These are great ideas but you won’t be able to replicate them. Instead, I’ll briefly introduce just two keys to recruiting offline fans and tie each idea to the auto industry as a concrete example of each idea. With this format you’ll gather the critical rationale and philosophy in an easy-to-follow format.

Key #1: Showcase your website and web properties.

This key is painfully obvious and I find myself amazed when I need to say it. However, take a brief look at items in the supermarket or some billboards. It’s a safe bet to say that every once-in-a-while, somebody makes a blunder and doesn’t advertise their destination web property. In this day and age, I can’t imagine how this happens, but it does.

Furthermore, brands need to display the website like they truly mean it. If I need a magnifying glass to read the website, something is wrong. I tell clients to display their website (or a particular web property they are trying to promote) as large as their packaging or ad space allows.

Here’s yet another marketing practice I think needs improvement: automobile dealer license plate holders.

Yes, many people immediately remove the license plate holder that displays the name and/or advertisement for the dealer from which they purchased the vehicle. Still, I estimate more people don’t bother to remove the holder, therefore they display the advertisement for quite some time.

Let’s identify who’s really benefiting from this display ad practice and compare it to promoting the website of the automobile company. I would say it is safe to assume that the choice of which dealer to buy from (this is assuming the customer has already decided on the make and model) is largely based on location. Using this assumption, I submit that customers are weakly tied to where they buy their vehicles (dealer vs. dealer), and they are strongly tied to which company made the vehicle (company vs. company).

I know that this assumption needs validation, but nonetheless many people would agree that a car purchase is a well-thought-out and lengthy decision process and the dealership that actually delivers the car is a relatively small part. That is to say that a vehicle that displays an ad to the auto dealer, is doing a disservice to the dealer relative to a vehicle that instead displays, “get into life’s fast lane at [carcompany].com”. The ladder ad campaign is part of the earlier (and more significant) part of the process as it convinces people to choose Company A over Company B. The dealer is trusting that the customers will then go to the nearest dealer of Company A that they would have gone to anyway once they decided they wanted Company A’s vehicle.

The salient distinction is how a dealer’s advertisement bypasses or omits the social internet.

Key #2: You, yes you, are featured here!

The most beautiful sound to a person’s ears is his/her own name That logic applies to seeing your own name. Lesson to learn here is you need to personalize the content. It’s worth the cost.

Speaking of getting personal, I’ll mention that my parents just purchased a new Mazda 6. A couple of weeks later they received a flashy notice (filled with repeated images of speeding cars and uses of their “zoom zoom” slogan) that informed them that Mazda created a website for them to help them better enjoy and maintain their vehicle.

Success! My parents were interested and they signed up at mymazda.com. This is a great start for Mazda, they brought offline customers onto their properties on the web. However, this should have been done before the purchase and part of the sales effort. Say, if everyone that gets to test drive a Mazda could get their mymadza.com website, they’d improve sales. They’ll bring some of the offline customers online and they’ll streamline their business for future and add-on sales. Mazda got a major part right by recruiting fans offline, but they could improve by starting the process earlier and driving excitement to their web properties from the get-go.

I would be remiss to say that these fan recruitment ideas assume that you’ve developed the web properties so that once these fans get on the social web, they follow through with purchases or awareness or whatever it is you want them to do after visiting. Also, these ideas are the tip of the sword and many more can be shared with you. Drop us a line and ask us about them or set up an intake call.

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