Social Media Marketing Success
Image Social Media Party via Razorfish Feed
EVDO is one of the companies that utilized social media and was greatly successful in doing so. Just to give a brief background, EVDO is a wireless technology that allows laptop computers to access unlimited surfing in almost every major city in the US for a cost of about sixty dollars a month. The service works when you buy a card and plug it into a slot in the laptop. The service is offered by cell-phone companies like Verizon and Sprint and resellers get a huge percentage for signing up users. A two-year contract for example, is worth more than a thousand dollars to Sprint.
While the deal seems good, the question was how to sell EVDO cards to businesspeople. If you would go for traditional marketing methods, opening a chain of retail stores would do. Another option would be an ambitious step to get a big chain like Radio Shack to sell the item and train their personnel to support it; advertise the stores and the cards to published materials and media that appeal to high-class business travelers. The problem is you can only hope that your price is low enough for them to consider the offer to be that good and the stores need to be convenient enough that you have to open several outlets. The cost of opening more retail stores, the difficulty of training someone about EVDO, finding support to determine customer’s needs- the process and the work is all too much.
However, the company EVDO.com took a very different approach and adopted the new rules of marketing. When you do a search on EVDO, you’ll find the largest forums of more than five thousand registered users. EVDOinfo.com created and sponsors EVDOforums.com, a free online message bulletin that is filled with various topics and information about EVDO. They also have an inherent search engine optimization that attracts traffic, built on a clearinghouse for free information. Customers can also find user details, links to free software, tutorials, and even software made by community members. EVDOinfo.com can be seen on the forum page, along with a link to its shopping site.
Through EVDOforums.com, the company was able to engage with many customers. This social media tool became the company’s creative medium to reach consumers. EVDO also has a remarkable customer service by phone. You can buy the EVDO cards online, with its step-by-step system leading you through the process. You’ll then receive an e-mail confirmation after the purchase order and when the item is shipped to your home. The company emphasizes so much on customer service because of its online bulletin board. Satisfied customers shared their experience with EVDO and the news about the company began to spread. As soon as consumers started using the service, they began to recommend the EVDO technology to people they knew. It took the company a lot less time and less expense to build the community than having to build several reseller stores. As a result, the company’s growth not only became unstoppable but profitable as well.
So When Should Brands Consider Social Networks?
With the success story of EVDO in using social media, brands may be contemplating about using social networks to boost up and direct their company. But as compelling as EVDO’s example was, social networks is not meant for every company. Li and Bernoff’s book, Social Media, gives a few details on how companies can know whether social media would be right for them.
First, company brands can create a social technographics profile. This means companies would group their customers based on their online activities. They can be under the category of “creators” or people who publish web pages, articles and stories online or upload videos or audio or music; they can be “critics” or those who use RSS feeds, add tags, web pages or photos or participate in online voting sites; those who are considered as “joiners” are people who visit or maintain social networking sites; the “spectators” are those who read blogs, watch online videos of other users, listen to podcasts, read online forums and customer review and ratings; and the “inactives” or people who do not have any online activities.
Companies have to verify if their customers are into social networks. If half of them are joiners, then getting into social networks can benefit the company. Age is a factor that brands should also consider. If their brand appeals to young consumers, then it’s a must for them to engage in social networks, because the audience is already there. Brands that cater to the older crowd are also likely to succeed with this strategy since many social networks also embrace these age groups. Companies must also learn to move forward when they see people patronizing their brands. On the other hand, companies who may not yet have an avid number of enthusiasts may have to work harder to promote their product brand.
Seeing what is already out in the social media market is also important for companies. Many popular brands appear in social network pages even before their company gets involved. The existence of groups that are usually not authorized by companies should not be a threat but a way for them to get their companies off the ground. Company brands also need to create a presence that encourages consumer interaction. This means that companies need to know how they would respond to wall postings, determine what interactive elements they can provide, and how they would be able to help consumers go deeper in the marketing funnel and influence others. Furthermore, they need to have a staff that can handle the programming of the company page and create responses to consumers’ comments.
Although advertising to the target audience can help spread the company’s brand message to people, companies also need to be aware that many brand messages may not be that easy to disseminate such as those present on social networks like Facebook and MySpace. If the company is opting for a longer commitment with its consumers or the brand isn’t that catchy as other popular brands, they can utilize blogging as a social media marketing tool.
How To Show Your Customers You Care.
Image of Leading Internet resources of customer care from Readwriteweb.com
In every sector of society, that fact remains that people all want to be heard and consumers are included in the list. The volume of letters sent to newspapers has doubled in less than a decade. However, newspapers are still publishing the same number of letters, which means more than a dozen opinions are still not heard. In this case, many readers are going online to find out what others are saying and to get hundreds of ideas exchanged in the global community. The House and Senate are no exception with this increasing surge of online public opinion. In fact, the volume of e-mail they receive increases by 50% yearly that each congressperson is getting more than a hundred e-mails daily. Again, the demand to be heard is all too obvious and considerably escalating.
Innovations Using Consumer Views
In the marketing world, a new wave is now dominating the realm of product development. Innovating a product or service based on consumer views and opinions has been a remarkable idea that companies are now taking on this current development. Three books have been written about this new trend. Eric von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation describes how the role of “lead users” can make an impact in the development of new products or services. Another book called Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company’s Future by Patricia Seybold presents several ways to capitalize on “customer innovation” by making use of private communities, customer ratings and reviews. Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, the authors of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, also described how companies can adopt the way Wikipedia was able to tap the global community to create new innovations.
Overall, these books are great and can provide you corporate ideas and visions on how to utilize consumer innovation. But you also need to bear in mind that collaboration with consumers and the process of really bringing them into the development and innovation process will, in many ways, be challenging. Over the years, your company may have been used to traditional marketing and product development programs. Perhaps your company currently has people in charge of product development, employees doing market research, people whose job is concentrated on services and internal processes and channel experts that help you open new distribution channels. But with all these work, the reality is, consumers are continually finding ways to get your company’s attention and tell you what you really need to know. Day in and day out, they are making comments and reviews about your product in forums, rating sites, blogs and videos. In more ways than one, they are now part of your company’s innovation process.
Embracing Consumers in Social Media
Once you’ve taken the step of identifying your Social Media objectives, then your company has opened that communication channel with your customers. Predictably, your relationship with your customers will start to develop as you receive insights from them. And this will eventually lead them deeper and more involved in your company. Embracing Social Media means making your customers an important part of product innovation. Developing products that your customers want does not only help your company create better products and processes but also allows you to innovate faster.
There are two reasons why embracing social media tools to reach consumers can make your company move quickly. The first reason is customers would easily tell you what they want. It wouldn’t take them long to voice out what they like and what improvements they would like to see. Using your product becomes a way for them to interact with your company. They may even have ideas that your company development team may not have even thought of. Companies who have tapped this source of innovation have never ceased to be amazed at how fast ideas can be generated. The other reason why embracing Social Media can allow you to innovate faster is because once they get involved, your company can make continuous improvements or iterations. Once you’ve tapped the customer community, you get quick feedbacks. It is far better than asking questions in surveys; conducting a study and having executives review suggestions because these measures can definitely take much of your company’s time and resources. Embracing consumers through social media tools like social networks, blogs, and user-generated sites can enable your company to do more in a lesser period of time. This new kind of development process would also bring your company to a higher level of product innovation.
Dell’s Initiative on Embracing Consumers
You can compare how two massive companies are handling consumer opinions. Accenture is a company with hundreds of employees. But the problem is if you were a prospect or a dissatisfied customer, you wouldn’t know where to turn to. Even Bill Green, the company’s CEO, doesn’t have his contact information or e-mail on the company website. Consumers are often passed around, not because the company deliberately planned to do so, but because they were use to the thinking that only the visible people in corporations had the ability to know what people want and that people would readily know where to find them. However, Accenture’s CEO is actually missing out on the opportunity to have a dialogue with consumers. Although he may feel that it is much easier to deal with attacks from outside the company by not laying out a means for consumers to contact him, he is actually losing an opportunity to start a conversation with his customers.
On the other hand, Dell, which is another giant company, is very much engaged with its customers. Bob Pearson, Dell’s vice president of corporate group communications says that as a company, they always want to be a relevant part of dialogues with consumers. Dell is one of the few companies that became successful in utilizing social media marketing tools. The company is very much linked with its customers that many corporate decisions are made without first considering customers’ requests and opinions. Pearson also stated that in every meeting, the focus is what the community wants. To them, listening to customers is not another PR method to pay lip service but a way for the company to act on the feedbacks they receive. Pearson also explained that this initiative is very much a part of Dell’s DNA. Over the years, the company has gone a long way from merely listening to feedbacks and responding to criticisms to becoming one of the few companies that seek consumer suggestions, whether it’s about developing new products or implementing company initiatives.
While the company started out with its consumer-centered blog, its social networking platform called IdeaStorm is the program that is actually getting the most percentage of valuable customer insight. IdeaStorm was created similarly to social tagging sites such as Reddit.com or Digg.com and basically functions as a giant online suggestion box. This initiative has really helped the business grow and has made an impact with the direction the company is taking with regards to its new products and services. Pearson reported that they have already made several changes within the company a few months after the launching of IdeaStorm. The site became an overwhelming success for Dell that more than a hundred thousand people responded in a span of a few days after the company announced new machines were running the Linux operating system. Dell has progressed from ignoring individuals to embracing consumers through social media tools.
9 Tips For Turning your Blog into a Marketing Tool.
Image above of the Southwest Blog as a means to connect with customers via Dirjournal.com
Social technologies are now being utilized by companies to effectively reach their consumers. More and more organizations are seeing the favorable returns of utilizing social media through discussion forums, social networks and blogs. Blogs are means to get across your customers and can also be a means for you to find out what consumers have to say about your products or services. If you would like to engage in a dialogue with your customers, then creating a blog will prove to be an advantage for you. If you see that your company is ready to get into the blogosphere, remember to start with people you want to reach, and your objectives or what you would want to accomplish. This way, your company will have greater chances for success as you implement the strategy and technology that suits your objectives. Here are some suggestions to help you build that effective blog:
1. Listening to your consumers is the first step. Before you get into the world of blogging, you need to listen and hear what is being said in the blog arena. You can do this by monitoring various blog posts from other companies similar to your industry, from competitors, different experts, and influential groups or persons. You can also choose to hire brand-monitoring services such as Nielsen BuzzMetrics or TNS Cymfony to help you out.
With blogs, you also have the advantage of listening to raw and authentic consumer feedbacks and opinions online. This allows your company to listen intently to your clients and consider the value of these comments. However, it is not suggested that you take everything and do all that your consumers demand. It just means that you need to incorporate ideas that enhance your goal and that you respond to your consumers in a way that is authentic. It is also important to remember that company-customer relationship requires a two-way dialogue. As you listen and respond to consumers, customer trust and loyalty is also built.
2. Have a specific goal for your blog. You must be able to determine the goal that you have for your blog. It can be focused on making an announcement on a new product or new improvements on your product, providing support for existing customers, responding from news or story from a consumer, or making consumers know that your company is concerned of their needs.
3. Develop a plan on how your blog will work. If you have a small company, you can choose to have one author for your company blog. But if one person doesn’t really have enough time to post content on a weekly basis, having other people assigned to make the post will do. You also need to decide on whether you’ll have a single company blog or a policy wherein blogging can be shared to many employees or different blogs.
4. Learn to create quality blog contents. Having quality blog contents can allow you to engage your audience more effectively, enables you to create a material that is relevant and timely, and also adds value to your conversation with your customers. Moreover, you can get information from recognized field experts to put more weight on your blog content or use multimedia contents that can add appeal and keep peoples’ attention to your blog posts. Generating content takes time and a huge commitment. You must also be able to provide non-biased contributions as you dialogue with your customers.
5. Develop a process for editing your blogs. Evaluating your blog posts is as vital as posting them. You need to indicate who may review and evaluate your posts, and who may help you edit these posts before you post them online. Bear in mind that this needs to be a swift process because you would sometimes want to respond and post on events and news items quickly.
6. Design your blog and the corresponding connections to your site. Decide how and whether you’re going to feature your blog on your company’s homepage. It will all depend on how vital you want your blog to be with your company’s image. How you design your blog and how it is linked to your site will give your consumers the idea of how official your opinion is.
7. Develop a plan to market your blog. You can promote your blog in several ways like using press releases, emailing your customers to introduce them to your blog, or even buying words on the search engines. You just need to take note that your goal is to have a conversation with people. Another way is to learn where your target groups gather to discuss your industry and products. Research on special interest forums, other blogs or industry-related social networks. These cyber hang-outs will enable you to identify new markets and find centers of influence as you observe their discussions and media postings relevant to your company. Incorporating links to blogs in your post and posting a comment on them can also help lead consumers back to you. In addition, you can also use your company’s name and products in titles and texts in your post to make it easier for your blog to be searched by search engines.
8. Keep in mind that blogging is not the same as writing. Contents in social media are immediate, informal and would require you to respond quickly. Therefore, you need to be updated with new developments especially those that are related to your industry. The emphasis and the goal is more on getting an informed opinion while it is still fresh.
Don’t be intimidated about comments because these can definitely start a dialogue with your clients. Many corporate blogs use moderation, evaluating comments to make sure irrelevant discussions don’t spoil the blog. You should be able to look into this as well, even if it takes your time. You can also delegate the task of monitoring blogs, responding to and moderating comments to keep the consumer dialogue active.
9. Always go for honesty, truth and authenticity. People who read blogs expect it to be an authentic report of a person’s opinion. This means there is a need for you to respond as real as possible. There may be situations in the future that may be inevitable and can bring your company in not-so-good terms. But then again, you have to do what is called for and deliver honest replies to consumers. Companies that respond with honesty and earnestness often lift their credibility.
Generally, if you want to have a good reputation online, truth, honesty and authenticity is a must. To be authentic is first having an understanding of who you are and these include your values, mission and character. Secondly, it means speaking from these truths. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association or WOMMA created an ethics code which was based on consumer respect and used fundamental ethical principles. The ethics code emphasized honesty of relationship, honesty of opinion and honesty of identity. This means you need to say who you’re speaking for, say what you believe and never to obscure your identity. By being true, honest and authentic, customers who trust you will become more loyal to your brands. However, the risk of exposing your flaws can open the door for more attacks. Being authentic also doesn’t mean that you please everyone. As a company, it’s better not to promise something to consumers and eventually break it.
Traditional Mass Marketing versus Social Media Communication
Image Describing Social Network Site use by Online Retailers courtesy of Social Media Optimization
Many companies spend a huge percentage of their resources and use a great deal of manpower in order to catch consumers’ attention. The task of a company’s marketing department has been centered on an attempt to speak to public consumers. Two of the main marketing trends that they commonly use are advertising and public relations. According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study in 2006, marketers have spent more than $400 billion on advertising; much of it was paid out for television commercials.
Mass marketing methods ended up shouting at consumers rather than really talking to them and knowing what they needed. The core was repetition and the emphasis was focused on the number of people shouted out and how many times the shout was delivered. In short, the mass mattered most. Public relations, on the other hand, aimed at free media exposures. PR firms boost up their clients’ deals and accomplishments, hoping that these facts would get noticed by influential media groups. These trends are fast becoming obsolete and are draining company expenses. Moreover, the percentage of consumers who respond to these trends are becoming fewer over the years. We’ll see why shouting is no longer that effective in the marketing funnel.
Consumers in the Funnel
Marketing can be viewed as a funnel. Consumers are initially driven at the bigger end of the funnel. At this stage, the public is made aware of a certain product or service, mostly through advertising. Consumers would proceed through stages such as considering the product or service, going for their preference and acting on to become buyers. Consumers shift from merely being prospects to become buyers as they reach the smaller end of the funnel.
Since traditional marketing steers consumers at the big end, companies spend a vast amount of time and effort to get them to become buyers. But the reality is you’ll be lucky if you get half of the crowd of the people who heard your advertisements. With so many products that are trying to get peoples’ attention, shouting isn’t as effective as it used to be and shouting hardly works at the middle of the funnel either. That is why marketers do not have that much control over the middle stages. Unlike before, marketers lead and dictate the path that many consumers take. People are now seeing a new dynamic trend through social media tools.
This is where the present trend of groundswell sets in. People learn from each other when they become aware of a new product. The influence of social marketing media tools becomes most evident in the middle of the funnel, because more consumers are now engaged in social technologies such as conversations in blogs, discussion forums, and social networks. A survey showed that majority of online buyers trusted recommendations from friends or acquaintances and even online reviews by strangers. On the contrary, trust in consumer ads is declining.
The Marketing Funnel and You
Once you get to analyze the marketing funnel, you would see that the value of your prospect increases as he goes through the funnel. You can use social media tools like blogs, videos and social networks to increase your prospects’ interest, educate them or give them more information about your product brand. This would eventually lead you to respond to various comments from your consumers. Responding and getting into these conversations may require work, but doing so greatly influences people in the middle of the funnel. These can include not only consumers who make a comment but also those who read the comment. Looking at the funnel, you would know how easy it is to understand ways you can value your existing customers, how well you are going to utilize your social media tools and how you would treat your consumers differently.
Reaching the Reachable Crowd
According to Seth Godin, author of the New Marketing book, Meatball Sundae, marketing can be divided into two eras. The first was an era where marketers were able to reach the unreachable. Ads were used by companies to get people’s attention, even those not really interested with their products. Public relations were used to reach people who weren’t seeking for their companies. There were exceptions, however, like the Yellow Pages and the classified ads, where people can look for companies or services that they specifically need or want. But generally, the win for marketers was to make as many consumers aware of a certain product or service. According to Godin, we see this with publicists who put a book in front of people who don’t need it, in television shows where ideas are put in front of people who weren’t looking for them and in mass marketing ads where people are not really interested about them. While it all seemed impressive and big, Godin indicated that we are seeing this trend dying.
And still many marketers are bent on traditional marketing methods- venturing to get ideas to reach the unreachable. But, nowadays, this model is being replaced and as Godin pointed out, the web has been bad at reaching the unreachable. Because of competition, the growth of many websites, consumers’ busy schedules and increasing needs, the unreachable has become unreachable indeed.
With social media communication, only the reachable target is truly reached. It is easy for many companies to have ideas and create products not knowing how to reach the people that these products are serving. According to Godin, instead of yelling at consumers to get their attention, companies can start making products, services and stories that appeal to the reachable crowd and do their best to build on their consumer group, not by yelling but by serving them.
Five Social Media Principles Companies Can Pursue
The utilization of powerful social technologies like blogs, forums, social networks and videos has changed the way the companies and businesses attract and connect with consumers. The way they do business is now affected by the growing Social Media trend. This new trend includes blogs and member-driven sites, user-generated sites and online tools that allow people to share Internet bookmarks and build web content resources together. Tools like Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia are part of this phenomenon.
Since 2000, the number of people connecting and depending on each other online has increased dramatically. Social Media has developed into a social trend wherein people utilize these technologies to get what they need. Rather than relying on traditional institutions like corporations, consumers now depend on each other for information. Nowadays, more and more businesses are using these Social Media tools to engage consumers.
Working with Social Media Objectives
But before your company decides to dive in Social Media, you need to first know and clearly define your company’s goals and objectives. Knowing and clearly defining the objectives and goals of your company is as important as harnessing these social media marketing tools. Clear and good objectives are essential and indispensable, and these can fuel your company to adopt effective social media strategies. In this way, you can be able to navigate your business to success.
Many companies working with Social Media showed that there are five main objectives that these companies practice which obviously made an impact with the way they deal with consumers. Company owners can match the type of business function they have with these objectives to see what works with their company goals. One example of a company that successfully utilized these objectives is 37 Signals. Based on Li and Bernoff’s observation, the following is a list of the five objectives, how this company adopted these principles in their organization, and how you, too, can pursue these objectives in your company:
1. Listening. This is effective if your company focuses on research marketing and development. As you look into your consumer targets’ insights and opinions, you can better understand what your consumers want. Instead of relying on occasional surveys and focus groups, your company can get more benefits by frequently monitoring customers’ dialogues.
37 Signals was not built solely on the idea of using rapid development process to produce Web-based programs. The company also utilized this objective and was able to connect effectively with its users. At the core of their success is their blog, which became a means for the company to listen and focus on the customers’ needs and concerns about rapid development software and design.
2. Talking. You can use this Social Media tool to promote and market your company. This goal is also ideal if you’re gearing up to expand from your present marketing programs to a more interactive medium. In this case, you will be able to participate in more effective two-way conversations between your customers and not be limited to outbound communication for feedbacks.
When they were expanded and launched their latest product, Highrise, 37 Signals posted several times about the software, gave screenshots and trade-off descriptions they were grappling with and also gave blog readers a free preview of the software. In that way, Social Media did the talking for their company. This step served 37 Signals well, as more than eight thousand accounts were set-up in just a single day. The accounts included not only those who signed up for the free, limited edition software but a significant number of paying customers as well.
3. Energizing. You can use the excitement of your consumers to your advantage as they promote your brands through word of mouth. Energizing keen consumers can help you especially if your business is centered on sales. Your consumers can basically help sell your brands to each other.
When 37 Signals’ very satisfied first-product customers started to recommend the product brand people they know, spreading the word became uncomplicated for the company.
4. Supporting. You can make use of your Social Media tools to enable your customers to support each other, especially when they have shared aims. This objective is valuable for companies with established or strong support costs.
This objective was also utilized by 37 Signals when they created their software brand. Because they developed a system that works better when used on a massive scale and also runs online, the company was able to provide prompt and reliable support to its customers on a wider scale.
5. Embracing. You can embrace your consumer ideas and let them see how your business works or use their suggestions to help plan, develop or design your product or improve your services. This goal is apt for companies that have already been successful in using the first four objectives and are focused on product development and modifications.
Part of the 37 Signals’ success was due to its consideration to customer feedbacks. When the pricing issues about the product emerged, the company responded efficiently to its consumers by making immediate changes and delivering it on the blog. The response that 37 Signals made to its customers’ suggestions gave way for newly upgraded paid accounts.
Knowing your company’s goals can well direct your company’s success. Identifying these goals can help you decide if your company is ready to enter Social Media. It can also help you know what Social Media tools your company can use to achieve success.