Marketing Innovator, Early Adopter, or Fool?

When something shiny and new surfaces, how do you decide if you want to be a marketing innovator or an early adopter? Do you know if Google+ is for you? As a small business or nonprofit, you know you can’t waste time and money chasing after every shiny object, yet winning big these days — or simply ensuring survival — calls for nimbleness. How to decide?

Shiny Objects

A new media channel, marketing technology or technique can cross your radar one day and then suddenly seem to be everywhere in a very short time, especially if it becomes a media darling. Distinguishing between marketing fads and true trends isn’t always easy to do.

I like to answer 5 quick questions before deciding whether or not to explore something further. Let’s use Google+, a current shiny object, as an example.

Google+

So at the end of June, Google sent out a limited number of invitations to individuals to “pilot” a new social media network named Google+. “Due to the overwhelming response” — ever heard that one before? – registrations were closed the same day and only re-opened on a limited basis for roughly a week. (This stimulates the ‘scarcity’ response in human nature, that is, we all want more that which we believe to be in short supply.) Then Google began allowing more and more invitations to the pilot service to be sent out until after under three weeks an estimated 10 million people had signed up. (This is a new record for adoption of a social network.)

The pilot version of Google+ has been well received, comes from a reputable (and powerful) technology firm, offers numerous features not available elsewhere, and has posted an application form for businesses to sign up to participate in a test for business profiles. Should you or should you not jump on board?

Five Questions to Ask Yourself

1. Are your customers there?

Obviously if you are at the beginning of something new, your customers may not be there yet, but do you think they will be soon? Do they tend to be early adopters? If not, your time and money is nearly always better spent on customer-focused activities.

Right now, Google+ is delighting the tech world and marketers. Few nonprofits are there yet, and the general public has yet to learn it even exists.

2. Can you ‘own’ it?

Can the results of your investment get a copyright, trademark, be saved or protected in some way? If this is a new channel, should it be classified as paid, owned, or earned media? If not fully owned, what guidelines govern your relationship?

Wisely, Google+ offers data protection and backups, which have been major weaknesses on other social networks. Make no mistake, however, you will not own or control the content on your Google+ business profile in the same way you own your website.

3. Can it offer synergy with other marketing efforts?

Something new that you can integrate into your strategic marketing plan and use to get more out of what you are already doing is generally a win-win.

Google+ already enables sharing just about anything online with other social networks and several other Google services, with the promise of more to come. So far, the tech data geeks are reporting much higher engagement and click-through rates on content shared on Google+, though it is difficult to tell if that is simply a “newness” factor.

4. Is there a market advantage from being in early?

Depending on your industry and your positioning, being on the leading edge as one of the first to adopt a promising new marketing technology can be expected, if not necessary. Then again, if yours is a more conservative world, you don’t want to forget the wisdom in the term ‘bleeding edge.’

The application to participate in the Google+ test for business profiles is quite clear — after the test you will lose your content and need to start all over again. For a marketing firm, important knowledge can be gained during such a test. For our clients, we would recommend waiting until your investment in developing content and relationships will last.

5. Do you have the capacity to do it well?

You can only do so much. It’s easy to be distracted and lose sight of the reality that no matter how promising something new is, you must execute it well to derive any benefit. In marketing communications, in particular, a low-quality implementation can be much worse than doing nothing at all.

Today, Google+ represents just one more thing to learn and do for many small businesses and nonprofits. With 20 million users, Google+ is still a long way from the consumer marketing reach of Facebook’s 750 million users. And we cannot forget that despite all the never-ending buzz about social media, email is still the most popular way for most people to share information.

Your Decision

Every business will answer these questions differently, of course. If you can answer “yes” to 3 out of 5 of these questions, I generally think this new whatever is probably worth exploring further. If you answer yes to 5 out of 5, jump on it! It may still turn out to be a short-term infatuation, but it’s more likely to be a trend and a marketing opportunity you won’t want to miss.

Are there other questions to ask? Let me know what you think in the Comments below — or as you prefer, via Google+, Facebook, or Twitter.