I was on a panel last night at the Ivey business School with Eli Singer, co-founder of Entrinsic Partners, a digital communications agency that builds corporate social media strategies. 

Eli had many astute observations regarding marketing and social media.  For example:

The choice of social media platform to use is secondary.  A strategy comes first.

Don’t invest too heavily in a particular SM product feature that you can’t control.  When facebook decides to stop the group feature you have spent all your time and money on, you are simply out of luck.

Most businesses really don’t know what they want.  Its partly fear of the new and unknown.  Delegating and abandoning the strategy to a digital native whose sole qualification  is that they use facebook won’t work.

And if you are that digital native that is conscripted to do it – approach it like any business case.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.

It reads as follows:

Author and marketing guru Seth Godin has a post today on his blog that rings true for anyone selling anything – including lawyers.

He talks about products where a buyer’s perception of them may not be the reality – leading to frustration after the product is purchased.

His conclusion:

“There are lots of things you can do to make the sale. They often are precisely the opposite of what you should do to generate word of mouth. I know, you can’t have word of mouth unless you have a sale, but a sale that leads to pain is hardly worth it.

My rule of thumb is this: every person you turn away because your product or service isn’t right for them turns into three great customers down the road. Every bad sale costs you five.”