http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/hubspots-2013-state-of-inbound-marketing-annual-report-key-takeouts/
Take a look at the blog for more details
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Saturday, 25 June 2011
Time saving tips for the working mum
An Oversubscribed Life!
You will notice the late entry of my blog this week, this is primarily down to my oversubscribed life and it got me thinking about time saving. I would imagine that lack of time is a concern for every working mother who is trying to juggle the various demands of life. Now I don’t want to raise your levels of expectation here and make you think I have discovered a magic formula, I haven’t, but I have been looking into some mechanisms that can help save a few precious minutes of time and that might even allow you to put your feet up once in a while.
This has been a testing week on the parenting front for me, there have been all the usual morning rants, “brush your teeth”, “get your shoes on”, “eat your breakfast” and as any parent knows these instructions have to be given at least 15 times each to have any impact at all. There are the numerous questions that require carefully considered responses “are all the people who live in Hungary, hungry?” and “but why can’t I marry my sister, she is a girl?” In addition to this I have started to feel like I am losing my powers of negotiation, only when it comes to the children of course. If I’m honest I’m not sure I was up there with ????? in the first place but more recently I noticed myself giving into their every demand just to enable me to carry on working.
This can’t be right I thought to myself, there must be another way!
Getting Organised
And so I have discovered Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, what are they you may ask? HootSuite and TweetDeck are both social media dashboards. They allow the user to access multiple social networks on one screen. This way the user can manage multiple accounts in one setting. Logging in and out of each social network is eliminated and users can choose to update the same information on multiple accounts if it is necessary. Although both are social media dashboards and both are tools to help manage multiple social networks at once they are different in their own individual ways. I am currently using tweetdeck and I have to say that this does meet my needs at the current time, but my colleagues all use Hootsuite and say it is far better. You will have to make up your own mind, here are some clips that might help you get started on these dashboards.
Hootsuite
Tweetdeck
Here is a quick overview of TweetDeck:
an here is a full list of tutorials that take you through how to use Tweet Deck stage by stage.
http://support.tweetdeck.com/forums/126043-desktop-video-tutorials
Some Tips
I am still quite new to these dashboards but it has completly revolutionalised the way I plan my tweets and posts across all the social media channels. This simple tool means that I can spend an hour in the morning planning what I want to go out on my social media platforms, schedule them all in and leave it for the rest of the day. Previously I would have been tied to the laptop panicking about the lack of communication with my followers. This really is a fantastic time saving tip.
I know what your thinking, it's not just social media that eats into my time it is also the day to day aspects of my business so before I sign off I thougth I would leave you with my top 7 time saving tips outside of the social media forum!
7 simple time saving tips
- Plan your next day the night before.,
- Prioritize my list and do the most important tasks
- Always stick to the list and tick off the item as you go
- Take a break from working and going to the gym or just out for a walk.
- Procrastination is the biggest time consumer, just get on and do it!
- Outsourcing things like writing content and updating your social media profiles
- Ask your self a simple question – “Is what I do now helping to get more visitors to my site?”
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Social Media - The Story of the Three Little Pigs
The Story So Far
We have all grown up with the famous story of the three little pigs (although I like the alternative 3 little wolfs variation as well). The moral of the story is obvious people who work hard, work smart, save money, think ahead, and help other people, will come out on top.
In marketing you wouldn't recommend a business to build their marketing solely on social media - it is just not good advice. Social media is just one part of the marketing mix.
Likewise the idea of solely being digital is not right for every business, it is important to recognise and use offline marketing (if it fits to your target customers). Again as a stand alone focus it will deliver results but be limited. Like the 3 little pigs using the right materials are vital to a solid marketing strategy.
Jeff Bullas wrote a good piece Social Media Marketing’s Biggest Myth that quite rightly argues the need to focus on being relevant and informative:
"The reality is that “social media” is based on self-interest. People on social sites are looking for materials which are useful to them.
Content defines the value to your customer - why people will either ignore it or share it. Content strategy is then a defining part of any online strategy. Here is a great presentation that drums home the importance of content for online marketing.
Mixing the Bricks and Mortar and Working Together
So if we return to the three little pigs story - our marketing should consist of mixing our marketing to produce a solid foundation and the people we invite to help us are our customers; because if they help you (and more importantly want to) you may develop a community.
We can't cover everything so I have focused on email - some people see email as an enemy of social media i.e. email vs. social media. The truth is, done well they should compliment each other (but it also depends on market/customers...).
Email Facts
- 72% of companies rate email as 'excellent' or 'good' for return on investment (EConsultancy)
- Email adoption high but lacking in best practice - the relevance, context and targetting (download pdf - Forrester) also support by MarketingSherpa 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report (download here)
Email is getting Social
- 6 Smart & Effective Email Marketing Tactics (Mashable)
- 7 Steps to Improve Your Email Marketing (Practical Commerce)
- Integrating the Facebook like Button into Mailchimp campaigns (Mailchimp)
Both Constant Contact and ExactTarget acquired businesses in the social arena, namely, NutshellMail and CoTweet. Why - well they recognise the value of social data and are looking to use this to build more precise targeting methods based on social data.
Putting the Story back into Marketing
So what is the role of social media within the marketing mix? Again this is big subject but here are a few reasons why it is an important part of any business now:
- people trust people (Source Nielsen) and therefore we look for what are friends or others say about brands/products and services
- brand communities can provide an ongoing development of a relationship with brand as opposed to a start stop approach (see blog post by Olivier Blanchard)
- brands can understand (and quickly) what their customers are saying - a dynamic feedback loop providing ways to improve your product or service
- researching customers (you can understand their online/offline behaviours and refine your marketing and provide value to them (this comes back then, to your content strategy)
- using tools to linkin with Facebooks open graph you can use the data to understand your 'followers'
- it is where you customers are spending their time online and hence where you can help them e.g. customer service
This is by no means an exhaustive list, it just meant to illustrate the opportunities and relevance of being social. In todays world we want the human connection as well. We can never underestimate the power of the human story, the connection we feel with it and the emotions that they evoke. Look at some of the highest ranked video's onYouTube and you will understand what I mean. When done well, social media builds as the brands facilitate the story of others as well as solving problems, communicating relevant messages and adding value it can also tell the stories of its people.
Monday, 30 May 2011
Co-creation the Engine of Enterprise Innovation
The Social Business Case
I started TribalCafe with the idea that we could help businesses change and adopt social media, not just for marketing to their customers, but to transform how they harnessed the power of their people; to create a shift in the way people worked together to innovate.We are still working towards that goal but thought we would share some of our thoughts and learning.
Despite the barriers we can learn from companies that have integrated social ways of collaborating and working such as Zappos. But there are plenty of other evidence. For more case studies and information visit the 2.0 Adoption Council, IBM (in association with MIT Center for Digital Business and the Dachis Group) who have published a series of case studies demonstrating integrated social business.
What we can take out from these case studies is:
- They inspire and provide evidence of what is possible and both in terms of capabilities and results
- Provide ideas, best practice and mistakes that can be shared and that people can reuse
- New thinking on existing similar issues that others may face
- Building blocks - knowledge and experience that others can use and add to
Inspiring insights
What we find today that whilst many businesses have taken their first steps towards using social media for external communications few have strategically aligned themselves towards a social business. This is despite mounting evidence from reports like McKinsey's Web 2.0 in business results reported in December, 2010. McKinsey's analysis of companies found that “Market share gains reported by respondents were significantly correlated with fully networked and externally networked organisations. This, we believe, is statistically significant evidence that technology-enabled collaboration with external stakeholders helps organisations gain market share from the competition..”
Deloitte has also released a new study on using social software for improved business performance. The social business study has made clear how business leaders of today need to harness social business for the “unique capabilities to address current operating challenges and improve operating metrics”.
So now we are starting to see a picture emerge of a new way of working a new enterprise ecosystem that fosters ideas, builds and supports co-creation processes and then resources some of these to effectively innovate. It is important that organisations effectively set a clear path for taking commercial ideas to fruition; if they do not they will fail to harvest the fruits of encouraging co-creation.
The Relationship Culture
Whether it is friendship, partners or marriage; good relationships involve reciprocation, good communication, consideration...if organisations want employees to give up ideas, foster collaboration, devote additional energy and hours when needed and advocate the benefits of the business...they need to think of developing a relationship with their people. This moves a business beyond a transactional exchange of money and benefits for goals and objectives to be achieved; it becomes a relationship culture. If knowledge and ideas are the new oil of commerce this becomes a necessity; but transformation needs to be considered, planned and developed in line with the broader organisational strategy it needs shareholder buy-in and the commitment to the long term.
“Culture is to organizations what personality is to people.” Edgar Schein.
Some of the Barriers that Enterprises Face
New Business Models
We are in a era where ideas can be transform industries, where new business models can forged through the combination of imagination and technology. The flexibility and adaptability of technology now invites people to break through traditional models, re-invent how we think of business; and for brands it is flattening the value chain - it is providing direct links to the end customer or consumer.
But many businesses as yet are not digitally literate and do not have an understanding of emerging technology and the possibilities it can offer. There is often a limited understanding of how enterprise social media can strategically benefit the business. Consequently it is hard for those unfamiliar with the tools and approaches of social business to extrapolate ideas to benefits and opportunities. The hardest part about social business is changing your thinking.
Analysis Paralysis
Some businesses are not taking action despite the level of data, market trends, case studies and other relevant supporting information. This analysis paralysis and aversion to change and risk is at a time when markets are moving faster than before - the risk therefore of not taking action is often not considered within this mix.
Meanwhile competitive businesses test, pilot and scale gaining learning, results today. They develop capability and discover how to create value through their people. It is not about prematurely launching some initiative though based on an ill formulated goal. It is about setting a course and strategy that is company wide, building resources and capabilities and incremental change based on strategic projects, shared learning and targeted parts of the business. Sharing knowledge and lessons learned on how a social business.
However,scoping projects, scoring capabilities and objectives, allocating budget and resources are vital to take the first steps
Tools and Technology Blindness
Many organisations are used to large scale deployments of software and systems. Yet the agility of todays technology involves much easier integration, adaptation and scaling. Organisations are facing competing vendor advice, internal positioning of technology needs and as a result get wrapped up in the tools not the business objectives. They get caught in the what can't be done rather than what is the idea and how can it be achieved.
It is important to establish a social business strategy that considers social business behaviours and supports the adoption of technologies that create a continuous flow of knowledge, information and value exchange. Enterprises cannot build a social business culture on tools and technologies alone.
Organisation Structure and Responsibilities
A social business has many facets and touches upon the core disciplines within the business. Executives are used to formalized structures and responsibilities, yet social business transcends this. HR, Marketing, Customer Service, Internal Communications, PR or IT are all affected. There is the obvious need to create a new position for this yet in the initial stages it needs to be carefully chaired and guided by a group to ensure consistency in the development of the process.
Co-creation the Engine of Enterprise Innovation
What does the social business look like:
Flexibility: people will have a more fluid role based on a far greater demand for project based work; where people are more identifiable as facilitators, specific experts or technicians, project managers...
Adaptable: Cost of fuel is increasingly making home working more effective, locality will increasingly become important and hours will be determined by a work life balance. Multiple projects become the basis for tuning hours vs. pay and benefits
Skills and Learning: If the pace of change is increasing then aligning skills to market needs will be enhance value both for the individual and the organisation. More businesses will attract and work with people to develop their skills - even contracted partners.
Open and transparent: Management practices will be transparent (mindful of course of peoples confidentiality). The familiar 360 process will extended to partners and customers but rather than staged annually it will be more dynamic.
Brand and Service: The brand, the culture and the people will increasing become intertwined affecting talent acquisition, customer perceptions and value proposition.
Cisco uses a social business strategy to improve brand positioning and create awareness, but the process of doing this has driven an output internal Enterprise 2.0 efficiency and a new social business culture. Co-creating value should not not only be through internal people; it is needs to be part of a broader market community where customers are included and opportunities to harness and shape new value models. The prize is available to those that start the journey.
I have only touched upon some aspects of social business and would welcome other ideas, experiences, case studies and examples.
Saturday, 21 May 2011
6 Ways to Improve your BtoB Blog
When talking to businesses they often have difficulty in understanding the value of having a blog. Many just feel obliged to have one because their competitors do or they were advised to by their web developer. Yet used well blogs can significantly improve your social business presence, SEO (providing fresh content and relevant SEO keywords) as well as being a powerful marketing tool.However, many businesses are making some common mistakes that could simply be avoided. In a tough and competitive market it is important to focus on marketing your business and to do it better than your competition. A blog is ideal for BtoB and integrated well into your social business strategy can yield great results. Here are the 6 ways to improve:
- Writing a blog that focuses on your target audience
- Starting your blog (or post) by conducting some research
- Identify how you can add value to your customers
- Use a good layout to make it visually appealing
- Use a variety of media and material (not all yours)
- Harness your people to help develop your blogging
1 – Writing a blog that focuses on your audience
Can you explain to someone who your target client is? Segmenting your customer is important to identify the types of customer you are trying to reach and will help when you think about your strategy. Different markets will have different issues, topics of interests, news...
- Identify and segment your customer(s)
- Imagine you are them and write down a profile of them their likes, responsibilities, issues...
- Decide on your strategy - what is the purpose of your Blog, how do you want to be seen, what value will you add to your customers
- Use keywords: not only for SEO so that you will be found by customers but also to help you focus on your writing and research
2 – Starting your blog (or post) by conducting research
Many of your existing or potential customers may be blogging as well as some of your competitors. So it is worth spending some time researching and getting familiar with what has already been written about and what you competitors are focusing on. It is very important that you’re not just repeating what someone else already said. To research and find blogs here are some useful links:
After reading a few you will also see what is topical, popular and being shared. Make notes and come up with your own ideas for how you can contribute to subjects in your industry.
3 – Identify how you can add value to your clients
Add value to your customers:- demonstrate an authority within industry e.g. demonstrate analysis or evaluation of market
- add value to your customers – help them with useful information
- contribute to thought leadership with any topical news in your industry – opinion piece
- provide insights into their market that can help them e.g. summary of market reports and key actions they should take, your own market research...
Some ideas:
- Organise a focus group meeting with customers to discuss issues in the market and what difficulties they are facing
- Listen to the customer conversations on forums, social channels e.g. Twitter and identify those that have high rates of interaction - what subjects are your customers interested in
- Ask questions using Linkedin Answers or try searching using Linkedin Signal
- Produce a short list of topics and then rank them in order of how your business can add value to those issues through the knowledge, ideas and experience of the people in your business
4. Use a good layout to make it visually appealing
When I started to write I hesitated over the title, why? – most people’s first thought is probably to use the word write but I think a good blog is a production.
Blogs are increasingly a collage of media pulled together to help readers connect with the narrative as well as make it easier to illustrate your points. We know that a picture can paint a thousand words and well a video (or animation) can help us understand a lot more.
- avoid filling a page with text only
- use images in a blog to help explain pieces add humour or illustrate a point
- add interactive media - research to see if there are any good slides on the subject on SlideShare (not competitors) or use your own in the blog and/or add a relevant YouTube video
- simple but structured layout - structure, visually appealing, illustrate points
5. Use a variety of media and material
Don’t just write about your business. But your blog shouldn’t just be all about your business, not if you want people to keep coming back. You’re writing for an audience. Incorporate their questions, their concerns, their issues and those of the market.
- Refer to experts - reinforce points by referencing other people blog posts from your market
- Refer to articles in the press or market media e.g. magazines, news items...
- Refer to customers - if you think a valued customer has a good point to make phone them: tell them you are writing a blog and you would value their input and if they are OK for you to quote them (you will make them feel valued)
6. Harness your people You have the opportunity to post more frequently, harness more experts and provide a varied and more interesting range of content, if you use your people to blog.
The Evolution and State of Social Media through Cisco Case Studies
View more presentations from Petra Neiger
- Ask people to write a blog - initially select a few people in your business to help with writing a blog - by sharing this you will be able to blog more frequently and provide different views and perspectives on your industry
- Be individual - everybody is different and has their own take on things, language and so each person may appeal to different audiences. Let people be themselves and don't exert too much editorial pressure.
- Become an editor - different people will have different ideas so you will have to place some guidelines on blogging, provide some structure to the process (schedule, meeting dates, submission dates, topics) and meet as a group to evolve and improve
- Measure - put in place some clear objectives as a team and measure them regularly; build into your marketing plans and review as a team.
It can be extremely motivating and personally rewarding for people to contribute to blogging. Be patient and share mistakes and learnings. If you are recruiting and people can see that you are openly letting people have their own voice and using social business tools it will allow people to understand your business and be inspired to join.
The last and obvious point is to ask your audience for feedback and this is where I would love to hear from people if they are in a BtoB business:
- have had success with blogging (please share so others can learn)
- have problems and want any advice (I will reply to everyone that comments)
- want to comment on any points
Friday, 13 May 2011
How can Facebook deals work for me?
An introduction to Facebook Deals
I hope you all enjoyed my blog last week; I have to tell you I was incredibly nervous about putting it out there. Thank you to all those who fed back to me, your comments are invaluable.
From the feedback I have had, it seems that what my audience would appreciate most is simple and easy to use information that can have real impact on their business.
I think this is otherwise known as quick wins!
I remembered an article that I had recently read in a local magazine and it made me think about the number of different ways in which business’s use money off coupons, discount vouchers and deals to entice and reward their customers.
Facebook has recently introduced a similar scheme ‘Facebook Deals’ this is free to businesses in Europe and is really easy to set up. Unlike the other more familiar coupon sites like Groupon, they do not solely rely on groups and the deals can be individually tailored to suit your specific business and the customers you are trying to attract. Have a look at this clip on you tube to see how it works click on Facebook Deals.
So why use Facebook deals?
Facebook has over 650 million members and the average facebook user has over 130 friends, this makes it a great platform to run a reward based system. There is real flexibility with the deal offerings and there are no minimum offers and no minimum purchases required. Currently this is all free of charge and this makes it especially attractive to small business's who would be hard pushed to hand over between 20% and 50% of their commission should they use an organisation such as Groupon to facilitate their deal offerings. 'Google Offers' will also be promoteing a reward based system but without the membership base that facebook has aquired, and the minimum requirement of a 50% reduction I dont see that this is yet the market place for the small business. If you want to read more about the strategy behind this new facebook scheme have a look at this article in the guardian http://bit.ly/hDOrm7 . I have highlighted below some of the more tangible benefits to running Facebook Deals.
What are Facebook deals?
There are four different types of deal:
Individual Deals
Individual Deals will create lots of attention in a short space of time. A one off offer like 20% off your purchases for a limited time can be offered to both new and existing customers.
Friend Deals
Friend Deals is a great way to get people to either buy from your business or visit your venue as a group. Friend Deals allow you to offer discounts to groups of up to 8 people when they check in together. Since every deal claimed will be posted to the users’ profile, this is an excellent way to spread the word.
Loyalty Deals
This kind of deal is to reward your most loyal customers and may encourage your occasional customers to visit you or buy from you more often. This type of deal can be very flexible, it can simply be a reward that customers can claim after a certain number of check ins or purchases.
Charity Deals
This is a great deal if you or your business cares about poverty, the homeless, disease or abandonded puppies for example. If this is the case you could consider setting up a Facebook Charity Deal for your business. As an example of how this could work, you could promise to donate a certain sum to your chosen charity, every time a new customer checks-in at your venue.
To see how to use the deals click here.
What should I do next?
Facebook Deals could really work for your business, if you take the right approach.
I would love to know if you have found this helpful and if it has given you some fresh ideas, if you do set up a facebook place or deal please let me know about it. What do you think about Facebook Deals, a replacement for Groupon or not?
Until next week, Alison!
I hope you all enjoyed my blog last week; I have to tell you I was incredibly nervous about putting it out there. Thank you to all those who fed back to me, your comments are invaluable.
From the feedback I have had, it seems that what my audience would appreciate most is simple and easy to use information that can have real impact on their business.
I think this is otherwise known as quick wins!
I remembered an article that I had recently read in a local magazine and it made me think about the number of different ways in which business’s use money off coupons, discount vouchers and deals to entice and reward their customers.
Facebook has recently introduced a similar scheme ‘Facebook Deals’ this is free to businesses in Europe and is really easy to set up. Unlike the other more familiar coupon sites like Groupon, they do not solely rely on groups and the deals can be individually tailored to suit your specific business and the customers you are trying to attract. Have a look at this clip on you tube to see how it works click on Facebook Deals.
So why use Facebook deals?
Facebook has over 650 million members and the average facebook user has over 130 friends, this makes it a great platform to run a reward based system. There is real flexibility with the deal offerings and there are no minimum offers and no minimum purchases required. Currently this is all free of charge and this makes it especially attractive to small business's who would be hard pushed to hand over between 20% and 50% of their commission should they use an organisation such as Groupon to facilitate their deal offerings. 'Google Offers' will also be promoteing a reward based system but without the membership base that facebook has aquired, and the minimum requirement of a 50% reduction I dont see that this is yet the market place for the small business. If you want to read more about the strategy behind this new facebook scheme have a look at this article in the guardian http://bit.ly/hDOrm7 . I have highlighted below some of the more tangible benefits to running Facebook Deals.
- Hassle free word of mouth marketing
- Builds loyalty and drives repeat business
- Enables you to reach new customers
- Gets people to reccomend your business to their friends
What are Facebook deals?
There are four different types of deal:
Individual DealsIndividual Deals will create lots of attention in a short space of time. A one off offer like 20% off your purchases for a limited time can be offered to both new and existing customers.
Friend DealsFriend Deals is a great way to get people to either buy from your business or visit your venue as a group. Friend Deals allow you to offer discounts to groups of up to 8 people when they check in together. Since every deal claimed will be posted to the users’ profile, this is an excellent way to spread the word.
Loyalty Deals
This kind of deal is to reward your most loyal customers and may encourage your occasional customers to visit you or buy from you more often. This type of deal can be very flexible, it can simply be a reward that customers can claim after a certain number of check ins or purchases.
Charity DealsThis is a great deal if you or your business cares about poverty, the homeless, disease or abandonded puppies for example. If this is the case you could consider setting up a Facebook Charity Deal for your business. As an example of how this could work, you could promise to donate a certain sum to your chosen charity, every time a new customer checks-in at your venue.
To see how to use the deals click here.
What should I do next?
Facebook Deals could really work for your business, if you take the right approach.
- Register your 'Place' on facebook, use the clip above for guidance.
- Until you have a 'place' your customers will not be able to 'check in' with you or search for rewards that may be available.
- Who are your customers, what kind of rewards would they use and recommend.
- Run a series of different deals and change them regularly to keep your content fresh and your customers interested.
- Use other media to create awareness - window posters, newsletters, email... to raise awareness
- Vary your deals to suit individuals, groups and loyal customers.
- Make it fun!
I would love to know if you have found this helpful and if it has given you some fresh ideas, if you do set up a facebook place or deal please let me know about it. What do you think about Facebook Deals, a replacement for Groupon or not?
Until next week, Alison!
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Don't throw marketing money away on a hunch! - Research improves your ROI
Using Research to Improve ROI
1. Define your strategy and then conduct research to understand how you can add value to your customers. This need not be hard and you can get some valuable information without it costing too much. Form many small businesses this can involve preparing a simple questionnaire and inviting existing or potential customers to meet up for breakfast, lunch... and discussing it with them. You will often be amazed at what you find out.
For larger businesses studying customers on-line can help. Digital ethnography (studying on line behaviour) now provides a wealth of information and access to customers and is often easier than offline research:
Strategies need to build sustainable communities rather than sporadic isolated campaigns
2. Too much data is no good to anyone. You need to focus on simple concepts and then build upon them to produce your creative concepts for marketing. Keep it simple, easy to understand and measurable. Test it on a small group of customers get feedback and then scale. Content then becomes relevant and of value to your customers and more importantly has a far higher chance of being shared.
Create relationships, drive conversions and deliver sustainable and profitable revenue growth.
3. Be consistent in how you deploy your communications. Reinforce your communications around your creative concept so that they reinforce your idea rather than dilute it. Make it interesting, an experience and build on the emotions; for it is the human touch that matters the most - this is what we share.
Reinforce and co-ordinate touch points to ensure the sum of the parts are greater than the whole
Linking Research to Value
Ultimately by using research the aim is to add value to a customers experience of your brand. Rory Sutherland provides some humorous insights into how advertising has traditionally gone about building intangible value. The reality for brands now is that value is being reshaped by our relationships and our networks. (If you only watch one thing see the interviews for diamond shreddies 13mins - very funny)
Change the Perspective
The simple truth is that research allows you to make better decisions about the creative concepts and content that you use to market your brand.
However, many businesses simply throw their money away when it comes to marketing. They certainly don't intend to, but too often many make assumptions about their customers that are simply wrong.
But this is an over simplified explanation of what happens, for quite often there is a recognised need for data, but accessing it and relating to customer profiles is difficult. The reasons for this can be many, not least is the problems of knitting together data from disparate data sources (customer service, promotions, email marketing...) to form some level of customer segmentation.
Taking a Bet
As a result many marketing directors gamble on assumptions that form the basis for creative ideas and concepts; which in themselves might be brilliant but simply do not bear any resemblance to the target customer.Yet most people shrewdly research and investigate suppliers before spending their own money. Why not then apply the same principal to customers.
Why does this matter so much?
Knowing your customer and understanding their needs forms the basis not only for marketing but also product development, customer service...it is at the heart of how well you serve your customers that determines how well you compete.
How and where we tell out stories has shifted, but they are the same stores. We now use our social networks not only to share these stories but to listen and participate in making them. As a result research has never been more powerful or more cost effective and can be used to improve decision making.
We must use new research technologies because technology itself is changing the way people move through life and transact their work. Part of the change involves privacy, mobility, and communications modes. People are harder to connect with, period: less use of land lines, heavy phone screening, growing perceived value of time, and more. In a word, people are more reachable and open if the marketing research technique fits with their lifestyle.
1. Define your strategy and then conduct research to understand how you can add value to your customers. This need not be hard and you can get some valuable information without it costing too much. Form many small businesses this can involve preparing a simple questionnaire and inviting existing or potential customers to meet up for breakfast, lunch... and discussing it with them. You will often be amazed at what you find out.
For larger businesses studying customers on-line can help. Digital ethnography (studying on line behaviour) now provides a wealth of information and access to customers and is often easier than offline research:
- social networks allow us to visualise relationships,
- people are more honest when they write behind a pseudonym
- respondents have control over what they share
- researchers are less obtrusive and less likely to affect the behaviour of the people they are studying
Strategies need to build sustainable communities rather than sporadic isolated campaigns
2. Too much data is no good to anyone. You need to focus on simple concepts and then build upon them to produce your creative concepts for marketing. Keep it simple, easy to understand and measurable. Test it on a small group of customers get feedback and then scale. Content then becomes relevant and of value to your customers and more importantly has a far higher chance of being shared.
Create relationships, drive conversions and deliver sustainable and profitable revenue growth.
3. Be consistent in how you deploy your communications. Reinforce your communications around your creative concept so that they reinforce your idea rather than dilute it. Make it interesting, an experience and build on the emotions; for it is the human touch that matters the most - this is what we share.
Reinforce and co-ordinate touch points to ensure the sum of the parts are greater than the whole
Linking Research to Value
Ultimately by using research the aim is to add value to a customers experience of your brand. Rory Sutherland provides some humorous insights into how advertising has traditionally gone about building intangible value. The reality for brands now is that value is being reshaped by our relationships and our networks. (If you only watch one thing see the interviews for diamond shreddies 13mins - very funny)
Change the PerspectiveThe simple truth is that research allows you to make better decisions about the creative concepts and content that you use to market your brand.
However, many businesses simply throw their money away when it comes to marketing. They certainly don't intend to, but too often many make assumptions about their customers that are simply wrong.
But this is an over simplified explanation of what happens, for quite often there is a recognised need for data, but accessing it and relating to customer profiles is difficult. The reasons for this can be many, not least is the problems of knitting together data from disparate data sources (customer service, promotions, email marketing...) to form some level of customer segmentation.
From the many different views it is hard to pin point who the customer is and how their behaviours relate to your product; in short there is little available data that can form the basis for insightful decisions. The truth is the impact of a poor customer data management strategy goes beyond missed sales opportunities and links directly to the profitability of an organisation.
Taking a Bet
As a result many marketing directors gamble on assumptions that form the basis for creative ideas and concepts; which in themselves might be brilliant but simply do not bear any resemblance to the target customer.Yet most people shrewdly research and investigate suppliers before spending their own money. Why not then apply the same principal to customers.
Why does this matter so much?
Knowing your customer and understanding their needs forms the basis not only for marketing but also product development, customer service...it is at the heart of how well you serve your customers that determines how well you compete.
How and where we tell out stories has shifted, but they are the same stores. We now use our social networks not only to share these stories but to listen and participate in making them. As a result research has never been more powerful or more cost effective and can be used to improve decision making.
We must use new research technologies because technology itself is changing the way people move through life and transact their work. Part of the change involves privacy, mobility, and communications modes. People are harder to connect with, period: less use of land lines, heavy phone screening, growing perceived value of time, and more. In a word, people are more reachable and open if the marketing research technique fits with their lifestyle.
The Purpose of Research
Monday, 11 April 2011
Is the Future of Social Commerce a Facebook Like?
Social Commerce the ROI of Social Media
Many people have doubted the return on investment (ROI) of social media (see our previous post). But even for these sceptics social commerce provides a tangible link between activity, channel and results. But it is not just about the ROI; for marketers it delivers unbelievably rich data (e.g. linking products to peoples social graph, creating digital word of mouth and provides game-changing insights about customers, products, and brands. Social commerce benefits both the brand and the customer. Why? Well first let's take a look at what social commerce is.
Paul Marsden provides a great introduction into social commerce and how it can be used:
What does Social Commerce deliver?
Social commerce works because we trust our friends and peers more than we do advertising (source Nielsen).
It links customers reviews, stories, or product questions and answers directly to products – some of these may be friends or peers therefore providing trusted information. This saves time on research they might otherwise have spent hours on. These conversations and reviews from a shopper’s own friends on a branded site (e.g. if a product has 150 reviews at a store and 3 are from people) provide valuable information for the buyer but also the retailer can link personal data to each purchase.
How the Change in Consumer Behaviour Reinforces Social Commerce
Gerd Leonhard in the presentation below highlights the need to add value, recognise the shift in how consumers behaviours are changing and be adaptive to these changes. Businesses need to adapt to the pace of change that is and think about how they engage customers in this connected world. Gerd has long championed the concept of convergence; the merging of technologies to create new business models using social media, mobile, location based services....this is the new commerce. Despite the opportunities mobile commerce presents, but as yet many retailers have no clear strategy for this Econsultancy - 10m UK consumers use mobile commerce.
Why is Facebook winning at Social Commerce?
Facebook is the platform in which we spend more time (Facebook users spend 1.5x more online that other Internet user) and invest in more social interactions than any other. Its meteoric growth is only matched by the insightful way the socialisation of data has enabled the 'like' button to be extended out to websites including e-commerce sites.
It is this extension of Facebook social plugins and easy integration into websites that has allowed elements of Facebook to be placed into websites and blogs extending Facebooks reach. Furthermore full integration with Facebook's Open Graph can turn a product page on the brand site into the equivalent of a Facebook page. As Jay Baer put it Facebook is becoming the plumbing on the web.
So why do retailers and brands spend money building up millions of Facebook Page fans and then drive them away from Facebook to convert a sale?
The Facebook Page is the New Microsite
Many brands use Microsites for promotional campaigns. They enable strong digital experiences and deep campaign integration. But Microsites are also a serious problem because they have a limited shelf life (and cost a lot to develop) and in addition there is still the need to spend money driving traffic to the site.
On the other hand you could use a Facebook brand page. Facebook pages deliver new opportunities to build a brand community, maintain longer relationships with customers thus reducing costs.
With the ability to integrate digital media directly into the page - what is there not to 'like' about this. Facebook Likes can also enable one-time (and in some cases ongoing) data transfer between the user and the brand to deliver better marketing experiences and feed enterprise databases. Facebook pages can become an integral part of a high-quality band experience and establish long-term messaging and data relationships. These offer ongoing value to the brand at little incremental cost.
Facebook facts for Facebook stores
Facebook is perfectly positioned to seize the opportunities of social commerce and brands are eager to tie together the ROI and link relationships to sales. However, the challenge for brands will be to create experiences worth sharing,be selective and tailored in their offers (if habitual it diminishes the brand position) and provide feedback and open sharing. Importantly businesses will need to ensure that they are relevant, use data to improve customer experiences and deliver value - leading with human relationships.
Many businesses will fail at social commerce, not venturing beyond offering the benefits of transactions within Facebook. If you look at the brands that are doing well they are providing far more value than merely the opportunity to buy their product.
A last look at Social Commerce comes from Erik Qualman and highlights the need for busineses not to think of this change as a question of if it is going to happen but simply when and how fast - and if they are going to survive!
Many people have doubted the return on investment (ROI) of social media (see our previous post). But even for these sceptics social commerce provides a tangible link between activity, channel and results. But it is not just about the ROI; for marketers it delivers unbelievably rich data (e.g. linking products to peoples social graph, creating digital word of mouth and provides game-changing insights about customers, products, and brands. Social commerce benefits both the brand and the customer. Why? Well first let's take a look at what social commerce is.
Paul Marsden provides a great introduction into social commerce and how it can be used:
What does Social Commerce deliver?
Social commerce works because we trust our friends and peers more than we do advertising (source Nielsen).
It links customers reviews, stories, or product questions and answers directly to products – some of these may be friends or peers therefore providing trusted information. This saves time on research they might otherwise have spent hours on. These conversations and reviews from a shopper’s own friends on a branded site (e.g. if a product has 150 reviews at a store and 3 are from people) provide valuable information for the buyer but also the retailer can link personal data to each purchase.
How the Change in Consumer Behaviour Reinforces Social Commerce
Gerd Leonhard in the presentation below highlights the need to add value, recognise the shift in how consumers behaviours are changing and be adaptive to these changes. Businesses need to adapt to the pace of change that is and think about how they engage customers in this connected world. Gerd has long championed the concept of convergence; the merging of technologies to create new business models using social media, mobile, location based services....this is the new commerce. Despite the opportunities mobile commerce presents, but as yet many retailers have no clear strategy for this Econsultancy - 10m UK consumers use mobile commerce.
Why is Facebook winning at Social Commerce?
Facebook is the platform in which we spend more time (Facebook users spend 1.5x more online that other Internet user) and invest in more social interactions than any other. Its meteoric growth is only matched by the insightful way the socialisation of data has enabled the 'like' button to be extended out to websites including e-commerce sites.
It is this extension of Facebook social plugins and easy integration into websites that has allowed elements of Facebook to be placed into websites and blogs extending Facebooks reach. Furthermore full integration with Facebook's Open Graph can turn a product page on the brand site into the equivalent of a Facebook page. As Jay Baer put it Facebook is becoming the plumbing on the web.
So why do retailers and brands spend money building up millions of Facebook Page fans and then drive them away from Facebook to convert a sale?
The Facebook Page is the New Microsite
Many brands use Microsites for promotional campaigns. They enable strong digital experiences and deep campaign integration. But Microsites are also a serious problem because they have a limited shelf life (and cost a lot to develop) and in addition there is still the need to spend money driving traffic to the site.
On the other hand you could use a Facebook brand page. Facebook pages deliver new opportunities to build a brand community, maintain longer relationships with customers thus reducing costs.
With the ability to integrate digital media directly into the page - what is there not to 'like' about this. Facebook Likes can also enable one-time (and in some cases ongoing) data transfer between the user and the brand to deliver better marketing experiences and feed enterprise databases. Facebook pages can become an integral part of a high-quality band experience and establish long-term messaging and data relationships. These offer ongoing value to the brand at little incremental cost.
Facebook facts for Facebook stores
- Here is a link to some great examples of Facebook stores and some here from Mashable.
- Brands are already being followed and consumers are often looking for benefits .
- The The top 3 brands on Facebook (by fans) all sell directly on Facebook - Coca-Cola (24m),Starbucks (20m) and Disney (19m).
- 76% of retailers surveyed plan to use Facebook for ‘social commerce’ initiatives.
- 2.5 million sites and counting have integrated Facebook Connect.
- 10,000 new sites integrate with Facebook every day (with social plugins)
Facebook is perfectly positioned to seize the opportunities of social commerce and brands are eager to tie together the ROI and link relationships to sales. However, the challenge for brands will be to create experiences worth sharing,be selective and tailored in their offers (if habitual it diminishes the brand position) and provide feedback and open sharing. Importantly businesses will need to ensure that they are relevant, use data to improve customer experiences and deliver value - leading with human relationships.
Many businesses will fail at social commerce, not venturing beyond offering the benefits of transactions within Facebook. If you look at the brands that are doing well they are providing far more value than merely the opportunity to buy their product.
A last look at Social Commerce comes from Erik Qualman and highlights the need for busineses not to think of this change as a question of if it is going to happen but simply when and how fast - and if they are going to survive!
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
Creativity and Technical skills - Social Networking Futures
Social data overload and visualization
Social networks help us to explore the world but they are becoming congested. As networks continue to expand and new content is added we will increasingly seek filters, aggregation and ways of making sense of all the information. We will strive to personalise it and make it relevant to our own interests. The average and offensive will go leaving hopefully the useful. The popularity and creativity of blending data and design has led to incubation and later proliferation of infographics. As people have investigated the behaviours and patterns within networks we have again turned to visualization to simplify and help us see the patterns.
Mapping the Blogosphere is a collection of maps of the blogosphere
Micro Fashion Network: Color visualizations show the continuous change of styles in fashion
Twingly Screensaver visualizes the blogosphere worldwide in real time
Making the complex look simple
Whitney Hess on Linkedin's InMap
The Guardian on Tweets during the World Cup 2010
Notabilia - Visualizing Wikipedia deletion discussions
Innovation across America
GraphNews is a news visualization browser from the Libero WebNews service
Last.Forward is a downloadable tool to visualize any Last.fm user's social network
Stack is an innovative visualization offerings from Digg.
Websites as Graphs shows the structure of different websites based on tags
An Industrial Renaissance - but the industry is knowledge and innovation
We are seeing a merger of creative and technical influences. It is reminds us of DaVinci, a multi-talented scientist, artist, engineer and designer who lived during the renaissance. Why?
There is a resurgence in the recognition of creativity as part of how we interact with objects, information and each other in the very spaces we work and the tools we use. Creativity has the ability to humanise the science, of being an essential ingredient in how we move from idea to design; and it is the tangible way we connect with people at an emotional level, for it inspires and that in itself is a incredibly powerful motivator. In this sense it resonates with Clay Shirkeys famous quote
' a revolution doesn’t happen when a society adopts new tools. It happens when society adopts new behaviors.'
So are we all creative? Elizabeth Gilbert argues the case that we are all creative. Clay Shirkey also illustrates this in his book Cognitive Surplus; here is an interesting article by the Guardian.
Convergence of creative and technical
Explore here a great collection of Ted Talks about creativity
Convergence is often discussed in terms of technology, but now there is another form of convergence that is as much of a catalyst of change as technology itself. Often when creativity is mentioned people make the immediate mental leap and association with designers and artists; however technical people (those that have often been referred to as Geeks), are demonstrating how diverse creativity can be. Many young minds are being fuelled by access to information and more importantly like-minded people. Many are producing technical solutions that push the boundaries of innovation and disrupt traditional business models.
As investors seize upon these bright ideas, the money flows and the news spreads daily of new start-ups. What is interesting is the fusion of creative and technical skills both within people and between people. Now that people are able to explore the world through the web. As they take and follow their many avenues of interest and curiousity, they occasionally may come across others within this network that become the inspiration which ignites their creativity.
Unlocking Networks
Networks are a pervasive part of nature of being human and being part of this world. From the network of neurons in our brain, to the network behaviour we exhibit to the complex networks of ecosystems. As Ross Dawson points out the network structures themselves influence the behaviours. But how does affect our futures and how does this affect businesses. If we use Ted Nelson’s metaphor, “Our bodies are hardware, our behavior software,” then how do our bodies work with our cities, mediated by software?
Why is this important?
Understanding how networks work, how they can be influenced has significant impacts on business. Networks affect the very fabric of commerce from share prices, business transformation, brand awareness to sales. But it is in how these networks can be influenced that many are avidly following this research area. If you could shave off months in terms of a business transformation process or magnify the amount of new customers and sales; then you have a compelling reason to research your networks.
What of Geeks and Creatives
Now is the time to explore enjoy and take part in the changes. We each have a role to play. For some this may be helping others to seize the technologies and tools to help them personally realise their inner creativity. It doesn't matter what the label is Geeks are cool as are Creatives; it is the energy and inspiration of creativity that counts. For others it may be recognising that it is valuable to explore all sorts of creativity with other people often outside your own discipline; together you might come up with some great ideas or simply have fun.
Social networks help us to explore the world but they are becoming congested. As networks continue to expand and new content is added we will increasingly seek filters, aggregation and ways of making sense of all the information. We will strive to personalise it and make it relevant to our own interests. The average and offensive will go leaving hopefully the useful. The popularity and creativity of blending data and design has led to incubation and later proliferation of infographics. As people have investigated the behaviours and patterns within networks we have again turned to visualization to simplify and help us see the patterns.
Mapping the Blogosphere is a collection of maps of the blogosphere
Micro Fashion Network: Color visualizations show the continuous change of styles in fashion
Twingly Screensaver visualizes the blogosphere worldwide in real time
Making the complex look simple
Whitney Hess on Linkedin's InMap
The Guardian on Tweets during the World Cup 2010
Notabilia - Visualizing Wikipedia deletion discussions
Innovation across America
GraphNews is a news visualization browser from the Libero WebNews service
Last.Forward is a downloadable tool to visualize any Last.fm user's social network
Stack is an innovative visualization offerings from Digg.
Websites as Graphs shows the structure of different websites based on tags
An Industrial Renaissance - but the industry is knowledge and innovation
We are seeing a merger of creative and technical influences. It is reminds us of DaVinci, a multi-talented scientist, artist, engineer and designer who lived during the renaissance. Why?
There is a resurgence in the recognition of creativity as part of how we interact with objects, information and each other in the very spaces we work and the tools we use. Creativity has the ability to humanise the science, of being an essential ingredient in how we move from idea to design; and it is the tangible way we connect with people at an emotional level, for it inspires and that in itself is a incredibly powerful motivator. In this sense it resonates with Clay Shirkeys famous quote
' a revolution doesn’t happen when a society adopts new tools. It happens when society adopts new behaviors.'
So are we all creative? Elizabeth Gilbert argues the case that we are all creative. Clay Shirkey also illustrates this in his book Cognitive Surplus; here is an interesting article by the Guardian.
Convergence of creative and technical
Explore here a great collection of Ted Talks about creativity
Convergence is often discussed in terms of technology, but now there is another form of convergence that is as much of a catalyst of change as technology itself. Often when creativity is mentioned people make the immediate mental leap and association with designers and artists; however technical people (those that have often been referred to as Geeks), are demonstrating how diverse creativity can be. Many young minds are being fuelled by access to information and more importantly like-minded people. Many are producing technical solutions that push the boundaries of innovation and disrupt traditional business models.
As investors seize upon these bright ideas, the money flows and the news spreads daily of new start-ups. What is interesting is the fusion of creative and technical skills both within people and between people. Now that people are able to explore the world through the web. As they take and follow their many avenues of interest and curiousity, they occasionally may come across others within this network that become the inspiration which ignites their creativity.
Unlocking Networks
Networks are a pervasive part of nature of being human and being part of this world. From the network of neurons in our brain, to the network behaviour we exhibit to the complex networks of ecosystems. As Ross Dawson points out the network structures themselves influence the behaviours. But how does affect our futures and how does this affect businesses. If we use Ted Nelson’s metaphor, “Our bodies are hardware, our behavior software,” then how do our bodies work with our cities, mediated by software?
Why is this important?
Understanding how networks work, how they can be influenced has significant impacts on business. Networks affect the very fabric of commerce from share prices, business transformation, brand awareness to sales. But it is in how these networks can be influenced that many are avidly following this research area. If you could shave off months in terms of a business transformation process or magnify the amount of new customers and sales; then you have a compelling reason to research your networks.
What of Geeks and Creatives
Now is the time to explore enjoy and take part in the changes. We each have a role to play. For some this may be helping others to seize the technologies and tools to help them personally realise their inner creativity. It doesn't matter what the label is Geeks are cool as are Creatives; it is the energy and inspiration of creativity that counts. For others it may be recognising that it is valuable to explore all sorts of creativity with other people often outside your own discipline; together you might come up with some great ideas or simply have fun.
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Customer Engagement - is it relevant?
Why is engagement so important?
The more engaged your customers the more content and word of mouth advocacy is generated and since people trust people this can attract new customers, develop sales opportunities and lead to sales.
Some communities take time to develop and this is where a clear strategy and engagement plan helps - see below for 4 stages of a community.
People have an identity, a voice and an ability to choose to listen or not to brand communications. Products are becoming commoditized, price differentiation is no longer sustainable and customers increasingly are more demanding.
Brands need to engage customers. Engagement is important for organisations because done well it can lead to web traffic, sales, and brand loyalty. On-line these outcomes can be measured and tracked against marketing communications and by channel. But what measures should be used and what is engagement really?
What is engagement?
“Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding media context.” - Advertising Research Foundation definition.
“Engagement is an estimate of the degree and depth of visitor interaction against a clearly defined set of goals.” — Eric Peterson
Here is a list of many more definitions.
Our preferred definition is “a consumer interaction with an aspect of a brand or media property.”
As you will realise there are many models and definitions. Forrester use a model called the 4'is and their video goes someway to explaining the importance of engagement.
However the 4i's don't readily explain consumer products that may not aspire to involvement and focus on influence. Conversely, a hotel brand needs to make sure intimacy and influence are optimized over interaction.
We have produced a scale that reflects how users develop their engagement over time and reflects their interactions both online and offline e.g. if you are a passionate Harley Davidson owner you may be active on-line, but may also attend offline events and possibly help organise them. For Adobe you might dedicate time to developing tutorials and tips for other people and share these on-line whilst hosting off-line training days. For more information of measures check our earlier posts on ROI.
The Value of Engagement
As organisations look for ways to develop their brands,
the main question arises of how engagement relates to acquiring and retaining customers. Clearly brands not only want loyal customers but they also want those customers to tell their friends about the brand about how good it is (and post good reviews, generate positive sentiment, produce content....); the new goal is advocacy.
By developing a brand community organisations can listen to their customers, communicate easily, reward contributors, gain data and insights and shorten product development life-cycles by sourcing feedback form the community. However, in order to earn peoples trust and develop the relationship brands must participate alongside their customers openly and transparently, and deliver value.
Organisations are placing more value on understanding people’s behaviour, passions, interests and ideas. This broader context of society and networks moves brands from a model of manipulating messages to purchase to facilitating solutions and experiences; from campaigns to relationships.
What is the benefit of engagement?
The Engagement db study evaluated the top 100 brands and their use of social media. Brands were rated more "engaged" by the more channels they participated in, and the depth of engagement within that channel. The report shows how engagement varies by industry.
What does this mean? Well clearly some industries are not actively using social media to engage with their customers e.g. Finance and may be facing challenges with how to use these effectively inside and outside the organisation.
For those organisations that are actively using social engagement there is a causal relationship to their financial performance. The key take out here is that those transitioning there marketing to social engagements and building communities develop more profitbale customer relationships.
Other reports that relate to this are:
1. How much is a Facebook customer worth
2. Some Social Media & Marketing Case Studies
Brands need to get closer to identifying how to develop user experiences that matter, but not just to trigger emotional responses to buy. This is manipulation for short term gain whereas moving from campaign to community develops sustainable relationships These depend on service, reputation, continued development of insights and facilitating customer solutions.
What are the trends that will affect customer engagement?
How can this be used?
It is important to understand how engagement fits within the overall social business strategy. Firstly it is worth researching and benchmarking your current position; what interactions take place and in what channels, who are the customers….
Aligning objectives to what experiences and solutions can be developed is a key starting point. Remember it is about customers first not your business. Use the insights from understanding customers to bring clarity to your content strategy – this is the fuel of engagement. Set out clear measurements and map your budget against where you can effectively develop your touchpoints with your customers. Monitor customer behaviour and engagement on an on-going basis to analyse what is working well and what needs to change, make this a continuous improvement process so that you are in touch with how your customers are changing in this fast paced landscape.
Challenges
Forrester Research noted in a recent study that “Marketers must wrestle down the numerous
data sources to capture the presence, value, impact, and degree of customer interactions across
channels.”
There are many potential metrics and these will need to be chosen based on your specific engagement strategies, media and channels. A key point is to keep it simple, easy to measure and stick to basics as a first step.
Organisations need to move away from campaign transactions and think strategically about share of wallet, share of lifetime - good brands recognise the long term benefits relationships can yield. Now is the time to build your brand community, your tribe.
The more engaged your customers the more content and word of mouth advocacy is generated and since people trust people this can attract new customers, develop sales opportunities and lead to sales.
Some communities take time to develop and this is where a clear strategy and engagement plan helps - see below for 4 stages of a community.
People have an identity, a voice and an ability to choose to listen or not to brand communications. Products are becoming commoditized, price differentiation is no longer sustainable and customers increasingly are more demanding.
Brands need to engage customers. Engagement is important for organisations because done well it can lead to web traffic, sales, and brand loyalty. On-line these outcomes can be measured and tracked against marketing communications and by channel. But what measures should be used and what is engagement really?
What is engagement?
“Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding media context.” - Advertising Research Foundation definition.
“Engagement is an estimate of the degree and depth of visitor interaction against a clearly defined set of goals.” — Eric Peterson
Here is a list of many more definitions.
Our preferred definition is “a consumer interaction with an aspect of a brand or media property.”
As you will realise there are many models and definitions. Forrester use a model called the 4'is and their video goes someway to explaining the importance of engagement.
However the 4i's don't readily explain consumer products that may not aspire to involvement and focus on influence. Conversely, a hotel brand needs to make sure intimacy and influence are optimized over interaction.
We have produced a scale that reflects how users develop their engagement over time and reflects their interactions both online and offline e.g. if you are a passionate Harley Davidson owner you may be active on-line, but may also attend offline events and possibly help organise them. For Adobe you might dedicate time to developing tutorials and tips for other people and share these on-line whilst hosting off-line training days. For more information of measures check our earlier posts on ROI.
The Value of Engagement
As organisations look for ways to develop their brands,
the main question arises of how engagement relates to acquiring and retaining customers. Clearly brands not only want loyal customers but they also want those customers to tell their friends about the brand about how good it is (and post good reviews, generate positive sentiment, produce content....); the new goal is advocacy.
By developing a brand community organisations can listen to their customers, communicate easily, reward contributors, gain data and insights and shorten product development life-cycles by sourcing feedback form the community. However, in order to earn peoples trust and develop the relationship brands must participate alongside their customers openly and transparently, and deliver value.
Organisations are placing more value on understanding people’s behaviour, passions, interests and ideas. This broader context of society and networks moves brands from a model of manipulating messages to purchase to facilitating solutions and experiences; from campaigns to relationships.
What is the benefit of engagement?
The Engagement db study evaluated the top 100 brands and their use of social media. Brands were rated more "engaged" by the more channels they participated in, and the depth of engagement within that channel. The report shows how engagement varies by industry.
What does this mean? Well clearly some industries are not actively using social media to engage with their customers e.g. Finance and may be facing challenges with how to use these effectively inside and outside the organisation.
For those organisations that are actively using social engagement there is a causal relationship to their financial performance. The key take out here is that those transitioning there marketing to social engagements and building communities develop more profitbale customer relationships.
Other reports that relate to this are:
1. How much is a Facebook customer worth
2. Some Social Media & Marketing Case Studies
Brands need to get closer to identifying how to develop user experiences that matter, but not just to trigger emotional responses to buy. This is manipulation for short term gain whereas moving from campaign to community develops sustainable relationships These depend on service, reputation, continued development of insights and facilitating customer solutions.
What are the trends that will affect customer engagement?
How can this be used?
It is important to understand how engagement fits within the overall social business strategy. Firstly it is worth researching and benchmarking your current position; what interactions take place and in what channels, who are the customers….
Aligning objectives to what experiences and solutions can be developed is a key starting point. Remember it is about customers first not your business. Use the insights from understanding customers to bring clarity to your content strategy – this is the fuel of engagement. Set out clear measurements and map your budget against where you can effectively develop your touchpoints with your customers. Monitor customer behaviour and engagement on an on-going basis to analyse what is working well and what needs to change, make this a continuous improvement process so that you are in touch with how your customers are changing in this fast paced landscape.
Challenges
Forrester Research noted in a recent study that “Marketers must wrestle down the numerous
data sources to capture the presence, value, impact, and degree of customer interactions across
channels.”
There are many potential metrics and these will need to be chosen based on your specific engagement strategies, media and channels. A key point is to keep it simple, easy to measure and stick to basics as a first step.
Organisations need to move away from campaign transactions and think strategically about share of wallet, share of lifetime - good brands recognise the long term benefits relationships can yield. Now is the time to build your brand community, your tribe.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
5 steps to start your social business strategy
Why focus on integrating social business technologies?
The trends have been discussed and explored, the case studies are readly available and the technologies are proven - now is the time to invest and build capabilities for a social business.
McKinsey highlights the case that adoption is critical for organisations to become social businesses. The simplification of integration, lower costs and adaptive systems create a rational for change that is undeniable; social business is the focus for 2011.
Benefits of being a social business:
- Increasing internal efficiency and knowledge collaboration
- Improved customer relationships
- Improved innovation through customer participation
But it is the need to adapt to changing customer behaviours and maintain mind share in congested markets that is driving much of the change. Let's revist some of the trends that are happening that affect how organisations market to customers.
Many organisations are still grabbling with how to use social media to engage their customers, but besides a few leading brands many are failing. But why? Well one of the main reasons is that in changing over to social media many are still broadcasting information and not engaging in developing a relationship. For others it has to date been a tactical dip in the water often isolated from the main organisational strategy.
Organisations now need to recognise the greater impact of a social business strategy to engage customers and unlock value.
5 steps in developing a social business strategy
The American Marketing Association (AMA) article on social business design, highlights the changing nature of work, a shift to cultures of sharing, and evolution of personal technology create emerging market opportunities. It points to a social business strategy.
1. Learn first - Explore
To start with, an organisation and key stakeholders should use an expert to quickly get up to speed with the technologies and how they are being used. A good consultant can deliver this and at the same time focus on your industry and/or market and what is relevant. Also use and involve people in the business who are interested and knowledgable. This is the explore stage of developing a social business strategy.
2. Framing and developing the questions
Develop the questions that apply to the organisation. These lay the foundations for developing a strategy and will help to prioritise any research needed. Involve key stakeholders in formulating the questions; some people have different perspectives, roles, knowledge and skills. These all add value at this stage. As a team prioritise them and sort them into long term and short term.
Here a few key questions as examples:
- How are our customers using these social technologies
- What markets/products and customers should we focus on
- What internal changes might be needed
- How do these technologies change our business model
3. Benchmark the business
Many of the questions that around strategy often relate to markets and competitors. We have in an earlier blog covered some of the key tools for social monitoring. However here are some further reports and information that may be useful:
- Media Monitoring: The Complete Guide (pdf)
- The Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms, Q3 2010 (pdf)
- Generations 2010 from (Pew Internet) pdf
Why benchmark your brand/business? Benchmarking helps you understand your market, competition and provides you with recommendations to differentiate. A good benchmark report will provide strategic options towards developing a competitive advantage. A benchmark report can be used to understand where your customers are, who are key influencers, their interests...It can be the start point for understanding how you are going to measure your business.
4. Identify the opportunity and invest
Choose a project that can deliver some tangible wins. If it is marketing to your customers, then consider that the ultimate goal is to focus on the long term aim is to build a community around the brand and delivering sustainable value. This means tactically building on each promotional campaign to develop the brand community rather than disposing of customer data and assets each time. This then engages customers in each stage of the brand journey.
A critical part at this is to set the goals, objectives and review the measures that you are going to use. We dealt with the ROI measures that can be used in an earlier blog.
5. Content, Quality and Engagement
Content is the reason your customers come to you, the reason they will connect emotionally with your organisation or brand. However, in todays digitally diverse world many organisations under estimate the time, effort and cost of good quality content. The content strategy is vital and should be thought of early. Multi channel communications must have consistency to reinforce each other and produce a unfiying customer engagement.
Managing and producing content is becoming increasingly difficult due to the technical skills required.
Key tips
- Know Your Voice - Everything you say on the social web should “sound” like your brand
- Time Your Content - Create a calendar that spells out what you’re going to pproduce and when you’re going to publish
- Add value - Know your Customer. Why does somebody follow you? Why do they like you? It’s because your brand offers them something; understand this track it keep it fresh.
- Solve Problems - Humans have survived for so long because they’re great at answering questions. Work collaboratively with your brand community to solve their problems, help with their interests...
- Be True - Good content isn’t fake. It doesn’t make promises that it can’t keep. It’s human and honest and that is why it makes a human connection with its audience.
As with any business the more time and energy that is spent at the planning stage improves upon the execution. It is about being great, delivering to high standard and implementing well and a good strategy determines much of this.
Be Agile
In today's changing world organisations need to adapt continually. The days of annual long range plans are gone. Scanning the environment, brnging on board intelligence and then adapting plans are vital to success. So set the goal of becoming agile and adapting to stay ahead.
Friday, 21 January 2011
Quora - Research or Traffic? + resource of all Q& A Sites
Why use a Question and Answer Site?
Question and answers sites are not new. Yahoo answers has been around since 2005 and Yahoo! Answers staff claim 200 million users worldwide and 15 million users visiting daily; pretty impressive. So why do we need more Q & A sites?
To get an idea of the popularity of these sites and the number of questions have a look at this link here which has lots of many interesting numbers.
Well it seems people like to share with others what they know and some people like to learn by reading the questions and answers; which makes it a social exchange. Sometimes people are not able to find the exactly the right information that want using search engines, particularly for complex questions.
A Look at Quora
Quora
Much of the initial seeding and following of Quora came from the Tech sector which is in part the reason for its stellar propulsion into the media. Quora has a simple user interface and these in providing information on similar questions aims to reduce repetition, thus creating a more Wikipedia-style library of questions/answers.
Key points:
- content indexed by Google
- rapidly growing database of questions and answers
- system reduces replication by merging questions
- collaborative and open - with integration of Twitter and Facebook
- people can write their own answers as weel as pose the question
- Organised by topic
In Quora - what features would make it better by Andrew Cooke
We think it is early days yet for Quora and they will add more features and functionality as they gain more momentum.
What makes social Q & A different
Social Question and Sites work slightly differently to just a simple search engine question e.g. using Google. The common features amongst social Q & A sites are that people can view responses to questions, comment and reply as well as see who has made those comments.
Many sites have use incentives e.g. Mahalo Answers and Yahoo Answers. But it is the openess and connectivity and how they integrate with Facebook and Twitter that defines the social element within sites such as Quora . These sites thrive based on people's natural social and inquisitive nature.
How will businesses and brands use Q & A sites like Quora?
These are the main opportunities to explore and review:
Customer Service/PR
- Brands will need to monitor these sites and ensure accuracy of information about brands/products/services so that brand reputation is maintained. However, Brands will always need to monitor the broader social networks (as well as have dedictaed support channels) to understand customer service issues . Q&A sites (particulalry those that have high visibility) do need to be monitored and moderated closely.
Customer/Competitor Research
- Deep Research - These sites are not good for any deep level of research. Whilst you may have masses of followers single questions rarely are sufficient to fulfil any serious research need. Surveys are much better for this (see online survey tools below).
- Light research - these tools are excellent for competitor listening and brand monitoring. Of course this does depend on your industry and the user base of the Q & A site you choose. But following people in your industry whether they are experts or competitors may provide some useful insights.
Customer engagement
- Brands can use sites like Quora to invite people to participate with them and to be seen to value their opinions. By asking questions about likes, passions, interests brands can gain some insights much in the same way they would use a focus group. The possibilities are vast. But brands need to be cautious that they don't set false expectations with people and don't create user fatique by asking too many questions. For engagement the answer is in the question.
Mashable details some more ways to use Quora that worth exploring and could be replicated across other Q & A sites.
Some thoughts on the future - Knowledge is Power but is it Democratised
Knowledge has up until recently had a high price. But as technology has facilitated crowd sourcing, sites like wikipedia, slideshare, docstoc... the ability to gain knowledge, aggregate and share it has made knowledge more univerally accessible and lowered the cost of knowledge.
The level of participation from people is incredible and this for the most part is done for free. There are sites that use rewards and money as incentives but there are more than do not (the quality argument comes in here).
Collectively gathering this knowledge is one thing, but accessing it and mining it are another. Perhaps this is the future possibility that many of these platforms have as an ultimate goal; the deliver to customers of a personal service through intelligent agents at the moment in time when needed. Artificial Intelligence has made swift progress in recent years - see these:
- Man vs. Computer
- Startup Turns Artificial Intelligence into Serendipity Engine for Mobile
- Google's Artificial Intelligence Translates Poetry
- AI may soon become reality: Penrose
Further, if as studies suggest, companies spend $8 billion per year on consumer research. But we are all contributing more data and sharing our personal information each day through Facebook's open graph, Twitter....combine these attitudes, opinions....and together you have the new 'oil' that is data.
SMB's and Enterprise
We have detailed the main generalist sites but we thought we would also add two other parts. Firstly there's a Q&A site called Focus.com that is intended specifically for SMBs.
Secondly if we pick up on the idea of knowledge management and routing questions to the right people there are two internal enterprise solutions worth looking at.
Opzi
Opzi is an internal Q&A site. It uses a Yammer-like model: users sign-up with their company e-mail address and then they can ask and answer questions specific to their company.
MindQuilt
MindQuilt promotes itself as a knowledge base focused on routing questions to the appropriate person.
The main Q & A sites and a full list of others
Yahoo Answers
Yahoo answers is large Q&A and second to Answers.com for numbers of users.
Key points:
- reward system for participating; levels and points (gaming)
- asking questions costs (5 pts)
- users can vote (thumbs up) to the quality of your answer
- well populated knowledge base
- easy user interface and indexed on Google
- Social sharing is limited e.g. Delicious bookmarking
Mahalo Answers
Mahalo offers the ability for those who seek answers to give tips to the best response. Integrated with Facebook, Twitter, Open ID and Linkedin.
There are different karate belt levels depending on how many points you’ve earned and your belt color determines how frequently you can post or ask questions; which leads to money.
Each Mahalo search results page includes links to the top seven sites, as well as other categorized information, and additional web pages from Google.
Linkedin Answers
LinkedIn Answers is a service similar, in essence, to Google Answers or Yahoo Answers. LinkedIn is quite different to many of the social networking sites online. It is positively geared towards businesses and business members. Since peoples profiles are linked to the question and answer you can judge how well qualified the response. It is a great tool for exploring opinions and thought within the business community. Limited capability to share.
Answers.com
Answers.com delivers responses from users as well as quality information from reference sites such as like Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the American Heritage Dictionary.
Answers.com provides a number of videos to help with using it. Using Twitter and Answer.com - Answers.com Starts Answering Questions On Twitter
Formspring
Formspring.me is a question and answer social networking site which allows users to ask questions on a variety of topics. The site has social networking features such as friends, following and messaging. Questions are considered to be messages on the site and users can find their friends by searching the Formspring.me site, via email address, or with Facebook or Twitter.
Facebook Questions
Facebook Questions lets Facebook users ask their friends, or Facebook users at large, questions on any subject. These questions can be tagged to fit into various categories and written up just like any other update from the top of Facebook profile pages.
Following the trend of making Facebook pages more public, question pages are seen by anyone on the service. Facebook is encouraging users who want to ask private questions to use Facebook's private messaging system instead. This has the possibility to trounce any competitor site and be a serious distractor for other players Quora.
Answerbag is also another user-powered Q&A community. Questions and Answers are listed in different categories while you can rate up and down any of the answer depending on its accuracy.
Fluther
Twitter announced that it has acquired software company Fluther in December of last year. Fluther describes itself as a "free Q&A collective that specializes in getting fast answers from the right people." .This is a recognition of Twitters need to expand its platform capabilities and range of services.
Others
- Yedda
- Lycos IQ
- Trulia Voices
- Minti Questions and Answers
- Rediff QnA
- Grupthink
- Dizzay
- KnowBrainers
- The Answer Bank
- AllExperts
- Able2Know
- AskMe Helpdesk
- What Should I Say?
- Simply Explained
- Ask a Librarian
- Askeet!
- Rediff Q&A
- Fluther
How you can use Q & A sites
There is a high level of interest in Q&A sites and inparticular Quora. What does mean; well simply put it is about traffic and eyeballs. If you have a question that stands out and has a high following/response rate then the probability it will transfer into traffic to your website or other social networks.
Why you should use them
From a business perspective (and it depends on your business) these sites can be used as light research tools, but some are better than others. You need to consider what your objective, who you want to reply and what you are trying to find out - what is the question e.g. research on Facebook answers and Linkedin answers provides you with very different audiences.
Getting to know your market/customers - Focused Research
If you want to conduct some more in depth research with customers use a survey detailed below is a list of sites.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey offers a popular online hosted survey tool that works well for basic surveys. They offer a free version and a Pro version - at about $20/month or $200/ year.
Zoomerang
Zoomerang is similar to SurveyMonkey in many respects, but offers in general a somewhat more powerful package for somewhat more money. Like SurveyMonkey, they offer a very limited free package; the more useful advanced package is offered to nonprofits for $350 per year for unlimited surveys, questions and respondents.
SurveyGizmo
SurveyGizmo offers a low cost solution with some advanced features. The free version supports 250 responses per month; they also have a range of more advanced packages from $20/month to $160/month.
PollDaddy
PollDaddy offers surveys surveys and polls that can be easily embedded into external websites and applications. They offer the ubiquitous free package, with a maximum of 10 questions and 100 survey responses per survey. More advanced versions cost between $20/month and $100 /month.
How are you using Question and Answers sites?
Survey sites
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