First let’s take a look at who the Gen-Y-ers are.

• Generation Y is generally considered, those born in the 1980s and 1990s.
• Gen Y is the largest generation in U. S. history. You thought Boomers were a big generation? Check out their kids. Generation Y is estimated at 77 million people—several million more than the Boomer generation.
• Gen Y has the highest consumer confidence. Gen Y lost the most in the recent recession, with lower wages and the largest number of job losses. Despite the recession, Gen Y maintained spending habits rather than saving. This generation is likely to keep spending at the same rates in the years to come, regardless of the economy.
• The new mommy bloggers are from Gen Y. Every PR and interactive agency wants to reach those mommy bloggers. According to The Parents Network, 68 percent of all births are to Generation Y moms (not Generation X). This up and coming group of moms has been shaped by a different upbringing and different world events than the one before it, and companies should approach them differently.
• Gen Y sets the trends. Baby Boomers emulate their Gen Y children, creating a “trickle-up” effect. Also, Media Post reports “67 percent of Gen X women identified Gen Y [women] as trend leaders” (hat tip to Rebecca Thorman). Generation Y influences the likes and dislikes of not just each other, but older generations too.

As you can see, this generation breaks the mold we’ve become accustom to. Their sheer size and buying propensity should make you pause and ask, are they my target audience and am I marketing to them properly? Don’t lose focus though, if these twenty-somethings and younger aren’t your buying or influencing audience fight the temptation and stay focused on your true target audience.

However, if Gen Y is your target audience you may need to change your game plan as they prefer to be communicated to, much differently than previous generations. Here are a few ways to reach this Gen Y through the Internet:

1. Target the influencers. In digital, the most influential people are bloggers, and you can find all Gen Y bloggers on two networks: Brazen Careerist and 20Something Bloggers. Target specific groups by interest on each site, write a piece for the main newsletter, and start networking with over 10,000 Gen Y bloggers. Get this group excited about what you are doing, and they will tell their vast networks of friends online.
2. Infiltrate the inner circle. A small start-up called CaptainU targets high school athletes with their college recruiting software. The company spent a year trying to market their company on Facebook with no success. Then, they offered internships to a small group of high school students, who started sharing the company’s fan page updates with friends. The CaptainU Facebook fan page went from 100 fans to nearly 2,000 fans within a month, all because they found a way to infiltrate the inner circle of teens they were targeting.
3. Build a “street team”. Generation Y gets most of their information from trusted resources—their friends. Most companies are wary of letting non-employees represent them, but Generation Y is collaborative, technologically savvy, and well-networked. Gen Y wants to build a brand with you, so let them. Provide them with exclusive information, pictures, and video, give them sneak peeks at new products, and hook them up with goods they can talk about and share with their friends.
4. Support a cause Gen Y is known to be passionate about causes—world issues, politics, and the environment. According to Diversity Inc, Gen Y is “undeniably a big reason that America elected its first black president in U.S. history.” Companies like Tom’s Shoes are popular with Gen Y because they can easily give back as they consume.
5. Advertise on mobile. Gen Y never leaves home without their cell phones. According to Ad Age, “one-quarter of Facebook’s 400 million users access the site through mobile devices; this set is twice as active as non-mobile users.” As geo-gaming applications like Foursquare and Gowalla take off, expect to see more opportunities to advertise to Gen Y on the go.
6. Keep up with the trends. Because Gen Y relies so heavily on technology for communication, the tools and tactics are always changing. If there is one blog you read about youth marketing, make it YPulse. They cover marketing trends for tweens, teens, college students, and young professionals in the workplace.

So if Generation Y is your target audience, make sure your communication plan is appropriate – what worked before, may not work now!

Some data provide by Monica O’Brien.
Monica O’Brien is the director of digital at Fizz and author of Social Pollination: Escape the Hype of Social Media and Join the Companies Winning At It. You can read her blog, Social Pollination, and follow her on Twitter at @monicaobrien.

Often times we take our existing relationships for granted and as a result we unintentionally neglect them – clients and/or influencers. Many of you have probably experienced this issue in some form as it commonly happens to marketing and sales people. I guess it’s because we are always asked to “get more”. Get more traffic, get more leads, get more conversions, get more sales….get more! And if we are honest with ourselves, we’re all motivated by the chase of the new. This issue can probably be chalked up to “the pursuit of something new” syndrome (yes, I just made that up but I stake claim to it – please send all royalty payments in cash).

The irony is that many times, “the pursuit of something new” actually prevents us from getting more business, and takes longer or costs us significantly more to do so. Identifying those you suspect would be good customers, targeting prospective customers and building a relationship with a new customer is many times a long and expensive journey. On average, the cost of acquiring new customers can cost 5x more than retaining current customers.

Don’t get me wrong, your sales efforts need to be balanced based on your situation – and for many that is a balance between reoccurring sales, add-on sales and new sales. However, if you only have a dollar to spend on marketing – that dollar is best spent on communicating to your existing clients. Here are a few tips on marketing to existing customers to drive sales:

1. Stay in touch
We prefer email marketing or personalized notes. Keep in touch periodically and especially on special occasions (birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, etc).

2. Show your appreciation
Demonstrate your appreciation for their relationship by sending things like a gift certificate to their favorite coffee shop or restaurant.

3. Make connections
Make a referral and send your clients business whenever possible. Connecting clients with other business that may be a referral sources is often appreciated.

4. Spend time with them
While this may be more of a sales tactic, it doesn’t have to be a sales pitch. Make sure you spend time with you clients periodically – and don’t “sell” them unless they express interest. Think relationship building, not sales.

5. Manage your reputation
Good customer service keeps customers coming back but an unhappy customer can be costly. Make sure you listening for frustrations when you do interact with customers, but also listen on social media tools. Frustrated customers will share their frustration on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, SmallerIndiana and the like. By monitoring these tools you can response quickly an put out any fires. This is called reputation monitoring & management – if you are not doing this, contact Three Hats right away as it could be a costly mistake!

6. Share good news
When there is good news about your business or your clients business and industry, send them a quick note referencing the article.

7. Ask for feedback
Ask your customers how you are doing and if there are ways you can improve your service. This can be an informal call/email or a more formal survey.

As we become more and more of a “digital society”, how we communicate is changing and so are our communication habits. The Internet and the thousands of communication tools that have evolved with it (Email, Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter & many more) give us the ability to communicate 24/7 and with people all over the world, but are then enabling “bad communication practices”?

Are we using these tools improperly to communicate?

To answer this question, ask yourself these two basic questions:

1. Who am I communicating to with this tool – the target audience?
2. What information do these people want to receive?

We are seeing a lot of people communicating the same message, via multiple tools, to various audiences. Frankly, that’s just bad communication! Some of the more prevalent tools we see this happening on are Facebook, LinkedIN & Twitter. We commonly see people linking their Twitter accounts to the Facebook and LinkedIN accounts – and vice versa. Each of these tools has a different purposes, different audiences and function differently. As a result, you shouldn’t communicate the same across all of them.

To illustrate the point – would you share the same information to your mother on Facebook as you would with a potential employer on LinkedIN? Or better yet, would you share the same drunken college story with your buddy on Facebook as you would with a business partner in Twitter? Probably not. I don’t mean to pick on Facebook – that’s just the easiest example as it is one of the most common tools.

Below are some real world examples that we’ve seen on Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter.

Facebook Example
Would your Friends on Facebook understand a post like:

“Thanks @SomePersonsName for the @SomeOrganizationsName mention at #QRS! Thanks @ SomePersonsName & @ SomePersonsName for tweeting about it!”

Unless you are an active Twitter user, the above looks like Pig Latin to you and your Facebook Friends.

LinkedIN Example
Would your professional contacts on LinkedIN appreciate a status update like:

“It’s impossible to flirt with the bank tellers because they see how broke I am #tfln (awesome!) 3 days ago from Twitter”

I’m going to go out on a limb and say your business contacts don’t really care about you flirting with anyone and probably have a different perception of you after reading this!

Twitter Example
If you work for a nationally recognized PR firm, would your company, colleagues, peers or fellow citizens appreciate a Tweet like:

“Fine New Orleans. Go back to your stupid flooded sh#t hole of a city with the trophy”

I know for a fact that the person who tweeted this is perceived much differently now!

Should you communicate this way?

These types of bad communication practices are becoming more and more common and are “cluttering” up our lives even more than they already are. If I am connected to you on LinkedIN (a professional networking website) I don’t want to hear about you “flirting” with anyone. And as a result of you telling me that – I probably don’t want to be networked with you anymore.

It is imperative to understand what the purpose of the tool is, whom we are communicating to and what information they want to receive from us.

Why is this important

Why is this important to your business? Because if you don’t understand this point, your customers might not want to be networked with you anymore either! Remember, you do have some control over how you or your business is perceived.

If you want help understanding how to use these tools to better communicate for your business, give us a call. 888.694.0646

So what is your website saying to clients, potential clients, and prospective employees? Do you even know?

Here are some practical reasons why your website IS important:

It speaks on behalf of your company in ways you can’t.

The first thing I do when I hear about a company that I want to learn more about is go to their website, and so do most people. It has been said that when someone goes to a company’s website, they draw an opinion of that company within the first 3-5 seconds. The opinion could be good, or it could be bad. Nonetheless YOU have the ability to positively affect that opinion with an effective website.

It’s a marketing tool available 24/7.

Your business development folks may tell you they work 24/7, but they really don’t. Make the most of this tool by understanding what your target audience is really looking for. It gives them the ability to learn more about you anytime, anywhere. And also update the site frequently so people have a reason to come back to learn more about you and what you can offer them.

It should be a destination point for marketing efforts

At Three Hats Marketing, when we help clients with their marketing, their website becomes a great foundational tool for our marketing efforts because it offers the prospect a place to go to learn more. That effort on the part of the prospect is then tracked, which makes our marketing much more measurable and effective. How are you using your website? Is it just an online brochure? Or are you using it to the fullest potential?

It’s extremely cost effective

Unlike printed marketing pieces, your website can change constantly. And as a result, it should be the most recent information available about your company. If you don’t have resources internally to handle your website, consider contracting with a company like Three Hats to handle it for you.

Now, go ahead, visit your site and see what you are saying to the world. See if it represents your company well. If not, put together a plan to fix it. Could be one of the most important marketing efforts you do.

Should I be using these tools to market my business?

We suggest the answer to this frequently asked question be a resounding, definite, straightforward, MAYBE!

Let me explain. First let’s start off with explaining that Facebook and Twitter are “social media tools”. Social media appears to be an ambiguous term and there are many different definitions floating around. Our interpretation of social media is web-based technologies used to stimulate social interaction and communication. At the end of the day, Facebook and Twitter are simply “communication tools”, and there are dozens of other “tools” just like them under the social media umbrella.

Now, back to the question at hand: Should I be using these tools to market my business? To answer this question, we refer to our three principles of marketing.

1. How are you different and why would someone what to buy from you?
2. Who is your target audience (in most cases, your buying audience)?
3. How does your target audience prefer to be communicated to?

Answering these three questions is the first step to every marketing initiative, and evaluating an investment into Facebook and Twitter is no different. It is easy to succumb to the peer pressure of Brian Williams and jump right into using Facebook and Twitter, but we are here to tell you….MAYBE!

The marketing principal of “How are You Different” is vitally important, but for this article, we are going to focus more on the “Target Audience” and “Communication Preference” principles.

The biggest attractions to these communication tools seems to be:

1. Everyone else claims they’re doing it, and
2. It’s free…we’ll, kinda

There are a tremendous amount of people, possibly even your target audience, using Facebook and Twitter but you must determine if they are the “right people”. So, you must ask yourself, “Is your target audience on Facebook and/or Twitter?” Both of these tools are Internet based, which means we have a tremendous amount of data to help us answer these questions. Spend some time defining your target audience, and performing research to determine if they are in fact using these either or both of these tools.

This is where the free part comes into question. The tools are free, but there is time required to determine if they are appropriate communication tactics for your business and what your plan is for reaching your target audience. Furthermore, there is time associated with setting up these tools, and actively using them to communicate and participate in conversations with your target audience.

That’s right, having conversations! An important aspect to both Facebook and Twitter is interaction. These are not your traditional one-way broadcast tools like TV or Radio. Those that are your Friends/Fans on Facebook and Followers on Twitter expect to have a virtual conversation with you. If you approach these relationships by just broadcasting information and not interacting, you’ll soon find that no-one is listening!

There is time associated with defining and building the measurement system to evaluate the effectiveness of your social media marketing plan and if you are receiving an appropriate return on investment. There may not be a cost to purchase these tools, but they certainly require planning and strategy along with time to use them properly – and time is money!

So MAYBE! Make sure you address the three principles of marketing and if you conclude that social media marketing is right for your business, spend the time to plan your work and work your plan.


If you are not already, follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

I think of myself as pretty “handy”. I enjoy doing small projects around the house but certainly know I have limitations when it comes to building things (especially when electricity is involved!) I’m lucky to have most the tools and actually know how to use the majority of them. I have multiple hammers and have driven a few nails over my 32 years.

Most of us have at least some building tools – like a hammer, and even though most would say they can use a hammer to hang a picture, or build a flower box, few would say they could use it to build something significant like a home. That requires a set of skills and experience many of us don’t have. I learned the lesson early in life when I misused a hammer and almost knocked myself unconscious… and I still have the scar to prove it!

Email Marketing is no different – maybe no physical scaring, but if you try to do it yourself you could be putting your business in harm’s way. Email marketing uses a tool, email – which is probably even more prevalent than a hammer these days. To do email marketing right, it requires a set of skills and experience many business owners don’t have – much like building a home. Just because I know how to use a hammer, I certainly wouldn’t try to use one to build my own home. In the nearly 10 years that I’ve been a marketer, I’ve found that Email Marketing is one of the most difficult aspects of marketing. It is extremely challenging – even for professionals that do it on a regular basis.

So why do so many people believe they can do email marketing without the necessary skills and experience? Based on the numerous conversations with clients that have tried it themselves, we believe it is due to a lack of understanding. There are simply hundreds of potential points of failure with email marketing. To be blunt, even though you know how to use email, or even one of the many “self service” systems available now for email marketing, you should not do your own Email Marketing unless you are an experienced professional. Your business may not be able to recover from the proverbial scar that could be made if you make even one mistake.

If not done properly, one simple email could cost you thousands of dollars in fines, damage your brand, harm your client relations or even lose customers.

Below are just a few of the finer details that many are not aware of with Email Marketing:

Email Permission:
Did you realize that if you send a mass email to someone without their permission, you are actually breaking the law? By far the most important aspect of email marketing is the concept of permission. Businesses sending emails without the recipients “permission” is SPAM and could be in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act, which means the sender could be subject to penalties of up to $16,000 for each separate incident. Just because you’ve exchanged business cards at a networking event, doesn’t give you the legal permission you need to add that person to your email list.

And even if you have a legitimate email list, there are a number of technical qualifications you must adhere to – like including your snail mail address in the email.

Email Design:
The design of your email plays a huge role if your email is received, opened and read. Did you know that there are over 18 mainstream email systems used and that the emails you send look differently in each of these various programs? Have you ever seen your email marketing in AOL? Yahoo? Gmail? Outlook 2003? Outlook 2007? Mozilla? If I am speaking a foreign language to you right now, then you may be sending poor-looking emails to your clients and prospects without knowing it – even if you are using a reputable “self-service” system.

Email Spam filters:
Are you aware that there are 11 mainstream Spam filters and that each have different definitions as to what looks like Spam? Do you know that the wrong characters and words in your email can affect whether your recipients even receive your email? If not, you are probably wasting money on emails that aren’t even being delivered to your recipient’s inbox – let alone being read. These are things that “self-service” systems typically don’t help with either.

Email Content
Once the email is delivered in the recipient’s inbox, the next most important piece is the subject line. Do you know what makes compelling subject lines – causing people to want to open and read your email? Are you aware that if your subject line is too short or too long, fewer people will open the email? Do you understand how images work in emails between email programs? Do you know when to use images and when not to use them? Were you aware that approx 30% of email recipients don’t even know that images are disabled in their email system – meaning they are not seeing your images?

Email Measurement
Do you understand keywords, hyperlinks, landing pages and other aspects in your content that make email marketing effective and measureable? Do you know the best days and times to send your emails to your target audience to assure the greatest open rate? Do you know what audience segmentation is and how it can add to your email effectiveness?

Much like building a home, email marketing requires the necessary skills and experience. If you think email marketing can be and effective marketing tool for your business, you need to leverage a professional who has spent the time learning the “ins and outs” of this marketing tactic.

Three Hats Marketing has helped many businesses effectively use email marketing – and we can help yours as well.

We’ve got the scars to prove it!

Correct or not, it has presented an anology that has been used in business over the years and I would like to make the point we see many businesses doing this with their marketing as well.

Here is a common conversation we have with business owners.

3hats: “So tell us what marketing activities you have done in the last 6 months.”
owner: “Well I had an ad in the local coupon pack.”
3hats: “Did it work for you? What was your goal for doing it?”
owner: “I don’t know….”
3hats: “What was your reason for doing it?”
owner: “I don’t know… I guess because my competitor did it.”

Often times business owners take actions with their marketing efforts solely based upon the actions of their competitors. Why is that wrong? Well, even though you are competitors and may offer customers similar products or services, there are many more things different between your businesses. Potentially your budget, your ideal customer, your geographic target area, your capacity, your services, your profit margin on certain products or services, your business model, your business goals, your vision, etc.

Instead, we advise companies to stick to the following for their marketing activities:

Follow your goals

Understand what you are trying to accomplish with your business (as well as your marketing) and stick to it! Set goals for yourself and determine the best ways to accomplish them in the most cost effective way. Know what your competitors are doing, but try not to let that influence the decisions you are making for your business – because as we pointed out above, you may not understand why they are making those decisions and as a result, may not be the right ones for you.

Follow your audience

Make sure you know where your ideal client is looking for the type of products and services you offer, and how they like to be communicated to – then go it ‘em. Be creative in how you reach out to them. Understand under what circumstance do they have a pain you can fix with your product or service and reach them then.

Follow your plan

Almost weekly businesses are presented with new marketing opportunities and new ways to spend their money. Develop a plan and weigh each marketing tactic against that plan. Is this the best way to spend these dollars? Do I know what I can expect as a result of spending this money? Does what I expect align with my business goals?

A little bit of thought and a little bit of discipline with your marketing can go a long way to help you reach your business goals. If you would like to discuss marketing planning or evaluate some of your marketing tactics further, please give us a call.

Tom Smith is the founder of Trendstream, a research consultancy that specialises in providing research and consultancy on social media, web and mobile. He formerly worked as Head of Consumer Futures at Universal McCann.

Social media continues to grow globally in terms of adoption, usage, interest and impact in a massive way. It’s undeniably changing the way that content and information work particularly in terms of the publishing of consumer opinion. This has transformed the way that consumers relate to brands and the way that brands should operate, driving direct interaction, transparency and a more consultative approach.

However, we still operate in a system defined by the old media world and consequently big brand involvement is still in the main tentative and sporadic. From my experience of trying to get big brands to embrace the social revolution, there are a number of reasons why they have yet to embrace the real opportunities that involvement can deliver:

1. Social Media is often viewed as just another marketing channel: It is of course so much more; it is a completely different approach to interacting with consumers and customers. Of course, you can advertise in a social media environment, but the true return on investment comes from developing communities, creating content to be shared, and talking and listening directly with consumers.

2. It does not fit into current structures: True social media falls somewhere between marketing, PR, communications, content production and web development. No one is quite sure whose responsibility it is and who should ultimately deliver their organisation’s social media strategy.

3. Communities and content are global: Users of social media connect, consume, and share content globally with little care for international borders. Marketing and PR departments and objectives are set up nationally or regionally. Very few organisations have a truly international structure and perspective.

4. Social media needs a long term approach: To build community, distribute content, or get people actively involved in an application takes time. Marketing and PR work on short time frames and are wedded to sets of individual campaigns or short term objectives. Social media is not a campaign, it’s a permanent approach.

5. No guaranteed results: You book advertising and it’s guaranteed to work. For, example you book a web campaign on page views and you keep going until you reach your goal. This is what advertisers call a push medium, i.e. you choose when people see it. Social media is a pull medium; usage and interaction is totally dependent on the user choosing to do so. If it’s not relevant or lacks creative brilliance it will not work. This makes it hard.

6. The metrics are new: Companies are used to the big numbers of advertising, but these numbers are different. Advertising is measured in booked exposures, i.e. page views, while social media is measured in direct interactions, i.e. number of friends, number of views or number of users. These numbers will always be smaller, but not necessarily any less measure of success.

Read the full post at Mashable.com

My furnace was out. And it was 4:30 am.

I ran downstairs and the thermostat said 58 degrees and the first thing that went through my head was the cost I was about to incur by calling for heating and cooling service in the wee hours of the morning.  So I did what any man would do – I flung open the furnace door to see if I could fix it myself.  And after a few minutes of staring at the endless wires and ducts, I quickly realized that I was fooling myself to think there was anything I could do.

So I made the call.  Now earlier in the year I signed up for a service plan with a local heating and cooling company.  So my call was to them.  I knew they offered priority attention to service plan customers as well as a service call discount.  What I didn’t expect though is what happened next.

I received a call back almost immediately from the technician on call.  While on the phone I explained what was going on.  He proceeded to ask me a series of really good questions and was actually able to diagnose my problem over the phone.  He then directed me on how to fix it and save a service call.

You can assume it was a simple fix if I was able to do it, but I can’t help but to reflect on his willingness to spend 25 minutes on the phone with me at 4:30 in the morning.  When we finished the call, I told him how much I appreciated him doing that.  He certainly could have just said “I am on my way” and charged me a service call and his hourly rate.  But instead – in his words – “I just treated you like I hoped someone would treat me.”

And therefore, one overnight service technician just got his company my commitment for another year’s service plan agreement at renewal time, my “word of mouth” recommendation to everyone I meet, and a blog entry from this local marketing professional recommending Mowery Heating, Air Conditioning and Plumbing to everyone that reads his post.

You wonder what good customer service can do for your company?  Now you know.  It will always be your best marketing tactic.