Measuring marketing’s worth

May 18, 2012 by (author unknown)

You can’t spend wisely unless you understand marketing’s full impact. Here are five questions executives should ask to help maximize the bang for their bucks. Read more on the McKinsey Quarterly >

Topics: Marketing

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The Real Reasons Why Brands Like GM Still Don't Like Facebook Advertising

May 15, 2012 by Robert Hof

There’s a curious disconnect plaguing Facebook in the run-up to its initial public offering this week: Just about every marketer knows she or he has to be on Facebook to reach its nearly 1 billion users, which is why ad spending on the social network nearly doubled last year. But even as they write Facebook checks, those same marketers invariably confess that they’re unsure what they’re getting from all that spending–in particular whether Facebook ads ultimately push more products off store shelves.

The Quality of the Conversation on Facebook Matters

May 14, 2012 by John Bell

Last September Michael Scissons, president-CEO of Syncapse, used data to reveal that “Engagement on the Facebook walls of leading brands is down 22%.” He plotted engagement metrics on the top 300 brand pages. His hypothesis is that brands are not delivering long term value in favor of quick bumps from overuse of coupons and offers.

More recently the Facebook Timeline innovations seemed to improve overall engagement. According to Simply Measured, the change brought a 14% Increase in Fan Engagement. The format and the much industry-discussed launch called for lots more pictures and video content which saw a 65% increase in engagement (people interactive with multimedia content).

Are we good or are we in trouble? Are brands delivering the best quality interaction and value via their page content or is it all devolving? Are learning the hard lessons of the difference between a Facebook relationship and a broadcast channel?

Quality matters
My hypothesis is that many brands are not doing all they can to create a sustained and valuable relationship with their fans, followers, customers via these still new channels (facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc…). They too often fall into a habit of just broadcasting out content. Since the metrics say pictures and video do well, they try and create as much of that as possible. Sometimes they fly by the numbers alone without context. Rohit Bharagava has a new compelling book out now called Likenomics. It is not about Facebook. He makes a great point about marketers who steer completely by data without regard for context in the section, “Why Context Matters (And Your Sticky Website Actually Stinks.” He cites John Hayes from American Express with a thoughtful quote – “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure and undervalue the things we cannot.”  I would add one word in there – “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure easily and undervalue the things we cannot.”

Marketers are looking at readily available data on what drives the most interactions. They are not always weighing the benefits of a varied and enduring relationship with fans. I hope everyone knows that a small number of fans in any fanbase routinely do most of the interacting with content. That is a standard quality of many communities. Keeping that loyal core involved is valuable and just good business. And, yes, when asked, consumers cite coupons or offers as the number one reason they follow a brand. Again, let’s not over simplify and make every interaction a “10% off coupon.” That flies in the face of everything we know about building valuable brands.

The data should guide us. Not rule us.

Relevance too

AdAge recently needlessly took a jab at the social media specialists who champion a more conversational approach to wall content.

“Among the weirdness Facebook’s existence has loosed upon the world is the idea that it’s OK, and perhaps even good business, for brands to sidle up and give you verbal balm for your case of the Mondays, ask for predictions on the big game and offer random thoughts on things that have not a whit to do with their product or service.

The touchy-feely strategy is meant to be conversational — human, even. But new data from Facebook itself tell us that what looks good on the social-media guru’s presentation deck isn’t the best approach for making Facebook work for the brand.”

Their true point and the point of the Facebook study is that content that relates to the brand – the reason people liked the page in the first place – matters. Users engage more with content relevant to the page topic which just happens to be the brand.

Clearly, relevant content is key, yet a conversational tone true to the brand can help as well.

Create the right mix
Different wall content drives different fan action. Likes, Shares, Comments all have value but not equal value. Object Likes (liking a piece of content vs. a page, also called “fanning”) are often devalued by brands. I had a spirits client who dropped them from KPI metrics since he felt, rightly so, that it was too thoughtless a gesture and was not indicative of any serious engagement. ‘Shares’ show up in your wall and therefore take bigger advantage of the network effect available in Facebook.

As Matt Creamer put it in the recent AdAge article, “Facebook to Brands: You’re Posting Stuff Wrong”,

“Another important finding was that asking people to like a post indeed yielded more likes, but it didn’t do much for the other forms of engagement, including the all-important share action that sends a brand’s post into a users’ timelines for all of their followers to see. Compared with likes, shares represent a bigger investment from the consumer and occur less frequently. Thus, shares are often going to be more meaningful from a marketing perspective. After all, they suggest the brand is tapping into that friend-of-fan network that’s central to Facebook’s viral proposition.”

We have found 7 simple types of content that each drive different types of user engagement. (See 7 Types of Facebook posts here.) Our Community Managers use them creatively and responsively with communities to drive long term and immediate actions. We listen and respond. If we drove simply by the data without context or a long term commitment then we would simply post remarkable picture after remarkable video – multimedia driving the most ‘shares’ in the Facebook study.

Quality of the relationship matters. Quality of the content, too. Brands can embrace a more fine-tuned and, yes, conversational but not irrelevant, cadence to their communications. Just using the Facebook wall as a broadcast channel will never justify the huge valuation in the Facebook IPO nor  the substantial bets that brands have made in their multi-million dollar ‘partnerships’ with Facebook.

Understanding the New ROI of Marketing

May 14, 2012 by Susan Gunelius

If you’re tracking monetary return on investment (ROI) as the sole criterion to determine if your marketing programs are working, then you need to catch up to the 21st century because you’re missing a big part of the picture.

Are Brands Wielding More Influence In Social Media Than We Thought?

May 10, 2012 by Steve Olenski

As one who has read, dissected and written about many a study regarding social media, brands and consumers, I can tell you I for one was quite surprised to see read the findings of a survey recently conducted by Market Force – a worldwide leader in customer intelligence solutions. In querying

5 Steps CMOs Can Take To Make Social Media Work

May 9, 2012 by Kimberly Whitler

Social media is important. CMOs get it. There are plenty of articles that detail how important social media is and many others talking about how unprepared CMOs are to handle it. However, few articles focus on the gap ? the space between knowing social media is important and being able to successfully leverage it.

A New Category Defined: Social Performance Software

May 4, 2012 by jeremiah_owyang

A new software category has emerged to bring performance marketing to social channels.

After interviewing over 10 software companies and 10 agencies, a new trend has emerged that will change the social business landscape. What is this trend? The marketing performance techniques to refine TV, Radio, SEO and other marketing mediums are now moving to the social space.   Read my definitive post on Mashable to learn how this impacts not only brands, but also Facebook and my long term predictions on how this will play out.

Market Needs
Companies are struggling to scale to keep up with all the conversations in this space, secondly, the noise is becoming deafening with everyone from consumers to brands all shouting in social that targeting is needed to cut through the noise. Those that deploy volume quickly find they’re part of the noise, and get cast by the wayside.  As a result, we’re seeing a new category emerge, called Social Performance Software.

Social Performance Software Defined
Software tools and methods that analyze, plan, deliver, and measure media such as ads, content, and conversations published in social channels. For example, they will analyze the conversations of your followers, then suggest which content and media to publish, then determine when to publish, on which channel, and to whom. As a result, content will reach the intended audiences and result in higher resonation, or higher call to action rates

List of Vendors focused on Social Performance
Here’s a list of the vendors, if you know of others, leave a comment below. Please note that this category stretches across a number of product lines, as this will be a horizontal feature set spanning nearly every social software company.

• Adobe Social, which includes multiple acquisitions including Omniture and Context Optional.
• BuddyMedia, offers both campaign platform marketing tools along with social ads with their Brighter Option acquisition.
• Bazaarvoice, now has turned their earned content from ratings and reviews into a new social ad unit –even outside of FB.
• Crowdbooster, analyzes, measures and then optimizes when content should publish.
• Prosodic, which analyzes the who, what, where, and aids publishers.
• Shoutlet, focused on larger scale companies can help with complicated publishing needs, at scale.
• SocialFlow, analyzes your current socialgraph activity, guides users on content creation, then publishes at highest resonation.
• Tigerlily, focuses on publishing content by theme, audience and location, increasing relevance.
• UberVU, who first mines and analyzes data, then optimizes when content will publish.
• Webtrends Social, tracks content and ads, and measures performance across these multiple locations.
• Wildfire, a campaign platform marketing company has recently partnered with Adaptly to provide social ads and more

I’ve written other posts discussed why this trend will be important, one major industry force is that with Facebook and Twitter now offering ads (and new ad networks will emerge off FB and Twitter) we’ll continue to see social media agencies turn to advertising. I’ll be writing more about this space in the coming quarters, such as benefits and downsides of automation, and where this future will head.

Update: This is on the official Altimeter blog, and CMS Wire.

Article: Is Your Social Media Strategy Global?

May 4, 2012 by (author unknown)

North America is no longer the center of the social universe

Dump Your Social Media Strategy. It's Not Customer Service

May 3, 2012 by Christine Crandell

Companies of all types have jumped on the social bandwagon. The allure of having a deep, meaningful customer relationship is enticing and social media is so easy.  Companies have multiple social media accounts across a wide range of channels including Twitter , Facebook, Tumblr, FourSquare, LinkedIn, Google+, and the list goes on.   Anyone with a thousand or more employees will likely have over 170, mostly unmanaged, social media accounts. With each new tool introduced, like Pinterest, companies rush to get onboard without thinking about how it fits into their business strategy or customer expectations.   Too bad all that time has been wasted.

Article: In Western Europe, Internet Behavior Differences Slight but Significant

May 3, 2012 by (author unknown)

Social networking most popular among young people in Western Europe

Article: Mobile Drives Global Search Advertising Surge in Q1

April 23, 2012 by (author unknown)

US marketers overwhelmingly focus mobile ad spending on tablets

Study: Mobile+TV Ads Work Way Better Than TV Ads Alone

April 16, 2012 by Robert Hof

Who says multitasking doesn’t work? We notice and respond to ads much more on iPads and iPhones while we’re watching television than we do to TV ads alone, according to a study released this morning by Nielsen for the mobile video ad firm AdColony.

Men Are From Google+, Women Are From Pinterest

April 13, 2012 by Steve Olenski

With all due respect to John Gray, men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus.

Smart Argentina's 140-Character Twitter Commercial

April 10, 2012 by (author unknown)

To launch Smart Argentina’s Twitter account, @smartArg, BBDO Argentina created what it bills as the first “Twitter commercial.”

Who Are Your Facebook Fans? Your Best Customers.

April 10, 2012 by (author unknown)

Your Facebook fans are more likely to buy from you, consider you, and of course, recommend you.

Proof that Facebook fans are worth more to brands

April 9, 2012 by Josh Bernoff

by Josh Bernoff

The debate about the value of Facebook fans continues to rage on. I hate raging arguments in the absence of solid evidence. So I was delighted to see that analyst Gina Sverdlov of Forrester Research had applied actual statistical modeling to address the question, in a new report called “The Facebook Factor.”

Gina’s technique is simple to understand. Using a statistical technique called logistical regression, she examined a large number of factors that potentially contribute to whether a consumer will purchase, consider, or recommend a brand. The technique could work for any brand; the report specifically analyzes Best Buy, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Blackberry.

The results are very suggestive.

Here are some facts from the report.

• For all four brands, being a Facebook fan of the brand boosts purchase, consideration, and recommendation. For example, 79% of Best Buy Facebook fans bought there in the last 12 months vs. 41% of non-fans. And 74% of them recommend Best Buy vs. 38% of non-fans.
• Of all the questions we asked (and there were many), being a Facebook fan had more influence over these behaviors than any other factor. Being a Facebook fan of Best Buy increases the odds that a customer will purchase by 5.3 times; the next closest influence factor is having researched consumer electronics, which only increases the odds of purchase by 1.4 times. The pattern is repeated for every single behavior and every single brand. For example, having a Walmart nearby doubles the odds that you’ll consider buying there, but being a Facebook fan of Walmart increases those odds by more than a factor of four.

Does this mean you should pour your budget into building fans for your brand? No! While there is a strong correlation between these positive behaviors for your brand and being a fan, there’s no proof that being a fan causes people to buy, consider, or recommend your brand. If you boost your fan base artificially, those fans will be less avid on average.

What this analysis does show is that fandom is worth something. Your Facebook fans are more likely to buy from you, consider you, and of course, recommend you. 

This means that cultivating them with content and interaction on your Facebook brand page is well worth it, because this is where your most enthusiastic customers are. You have the opportunity to supercharge them, not just to buy, but to spread your message. For companies that don’t provide these fans what they want — interaction, content, things to share — this is a wakeup call. And if your brand doesn’t have a Facebook page, this report is proof you’re stuck in marketing thinking from the previous century. Use this analysis to justify putting your marketing budget and effort into a Facebook page and the staff to keep it lively.

 

10 Communication Secrets of Great Leaders

April 4, 2012 by Mike Myatt

It is simply impossible to become a great leader without being a great communicator. I hope you noticed the previous sentence didn’t refer to being a great talker – big difference. The key to becoming a skillful communicator is rarely found in what has been taught in the world of

Coping With Twitter’s Unfollow Bug

March 28, 2012 by jeremiah_owyang

I originally posted this on Techcrunch, and cross-posted here on the Web Strategy blog.

If you’re like me, you may have noticed that Twitter may be arbitrarily, randomly, and haphazardly, unfollowing people you fully intended to follow. Similarly, if you’ve ever noticed your friends and contacts unfollowed you, it may have caused a sense of confusion, dread, or self-insecurity. Before one spirals into a series of apologies or deep-depression, it’s likely not your fault, (whew!).

What’s causing this? I’m not sure, so I asked my proper contacts at Twitter who responded “This is a bug, and our team is working to fix it.” They also sent me a link to their support FAQ, which indicates the known issue. I’ll leave it to the team at Twitter to get this resolved, but in the meantime, let’s discuss how we can cope with this industry phenomenon.

Imagine this bug in the physical world: Your dear Aunt Margaret wasn’t invited to your wedding due to mail parcels gone missing, or your executive wasn’t invited to your big presentation meeting because your address book deleted him, or you couldn’t call your best friend to let them know about your funding announcement because his contact info went missing.

The act of following someone in Twitter is an important social indicator for at least three reasons: 1) A follow suggests the individuals content is worthy of listening to and you want to hear their thoughts –even the most mundane ones 2) It’s an important indicator that you’re willing to engage in deeper conversations by receiving direct messages and 3) At a broader social perspective, this is a gesture this person is in your broader social clan, your kin, your affinity.

Importantly, in my line of work (and probably in yours too), direct messages have become a mainstay of communications with clients; in fact, some overloaded executives ask me to DM them, rather than email them. In more than one case has a qualified business request come by direct messages requesting my research and advisory services. Unlike the overloaded email channel, direct messages are an important opt-in business communication channel of higher quality signal.

Despite the business communication opportunity losses, there are broader social impacts that may relationships around you. Just a few days ago, one of my dear colleagues Susan (@Setlinger) pointed out that she wanted to send me some information, but noticed I had unfollowed her and half-jokingly wondered if she’d offended me. This wasn’t any passive-aggressive maneuver by me, I had full intentions to follow her, and quickly apologized and refollowed her.

Yet, I wonder how many business, personal, and casual relationships are strained by the bug haphazardly unfollowing. It causes us to give pause and question the stability of the Twitter infrastructure, usage of my personal data and social network, and what important messages I may have missed from my trusted Twitter network.

So what can you do? If you find that you’ve arbitrarily unfollowed someone in Twitter (or maybe you need an excuse to escape the ex), and you’re in a potential embarrassing situation, I recommend bookmarking this blog post, and sending it your apparent victim, explaining the situation was out of your hands. Hopefully no relationships were damaged, and we can continue happily twitter-ing with relationships salvaged.

I’d love to hear from you, have you been a victim of the bug? How are you coping?

Related Links: My findings spread to Telgraph, Huffington Post, Mashable, Verge, cnet and many others.

Article: Execs Foresee Continued Shift to Digital Marketing

March 27, 2012 by (author unknown)

Social media marketing spend predicted to nearly triple over five years

Article: CEOs Who Tweet Held in High Regard

March 27, 2012 by (author unknown)

Top execs slower than employees, customers to view social media as communications channel