This post is part of a series entitled The Four Pillars of Social Media. For this post we will be focusing on the third pillar: Engagement. Our other engagement topics, as part of this series, included:  

• Letting Go Of Your Ego
• Using Content To Extend Your Reach Through Social Media
• You Don’t Always Have the Best Ideas

Integrating Social Media Engagement Across the Marketing Mix 

Often when you hear about social media, it’s from a marketing communications perspective. That’s where most strategies start… “Are you listening, engaging, sharing” and all of the other buzz words that are floating around these days. We can and should also talk about social media (the concept and the tools) from an overall business perspective. Meaning, how is social media not only affecting our communications with customers, prospects, employees, stakeholders, shareholders, etc., but how is it affecting or impacting our business operations. 

The notion of “if we build it, they will come” is fraught with idealism that unfortunately causes a lot of businesses to fail in their efforts, especially when it comes to product/service development. No amount of listening, engaging or sharing will have people banging down your doors to buy if there isn’t a want or need for your product/service. 

I know what you’re thinking… Apple does this all the time, just look at the iPod, iPhone or iPad! Nope. Apple is just innovating and capitalizing on technologies and wants/needs people already had. But, starting from scratch to create a new want/need is very difficult. And its product/service development that usually starts the cogs of the marketing mix. 

Social media has given customers the means to provide feedback on products/services they’d like, where they want to buy them, how much they are willing to pay and how they want to hear from you or where they’d like to talk about you.

Let’s check out some examples of how social media engagement  is changing the marketing mix and business operations. 

Product:
Have you ever heard of Fiskars? They make things that cut other things. Doesn’t sound like you could do much socially with things like scissors, right? Wrong. Fiskars reached out to their loyal customers to help create a community called “Fiskateers.” I won’t get into all of the details here, because you can read that story here, here and here. What’s most interesting is that Fiskars is now tapping into the Fiskateers for product development. Yes, you heard that correctly… The Fiskateers have a hand in creating new products! Apparently, engineers who doubted the community renamed themselves “Fiskaneers.” If you are a “social” company or considering social media, how would you handle product development insights? Would you be open and flexible to suggestions or would you hang out a “this is our turf” sign?

If you think that this type of social media engagement only works in the B2C space, I urge you to check out IBM’s product development story. It’s another great example of customers wanting to be involved and creating a service that they want to buy!

Price:
Most business professionals and MBAs know how to determine price in their sleep. The problem is the methods learned are inside-out focused. In today’s world we need to think about price from the perspective of the customer or prospect—how much are they willing to pay for your product or service (you might even want to know this before product/service development!). That mindset causes issues, doesn’t it? What if the price people are willing to pay is below your costs, etc. One example of social media providing insights on pricing that lead to a new service is Charles Schwab. Charles Schwab took the approach to listen to a community of Gen X non-customers and based on the feedback, they lowered their account minimums to $1,000 (among other changes), resulting in a 32% growth of Gen X customers.

Place (Distribution) & Promotion:
It’s no secret that the beer industry has always been social and that’s especially true for the microbrewing industry. Microbrews have always relied on word of mouth for their success and social media just enhances that WOM. An example of how social media has changed one brewery’s distribution and promotional efforts is Victory Brewing Company. Of course, Victory has a Twitter account, Facebook Fan Page, and YouTube channel, but their marketing efforts also have to do with all of the ‘social information’ they collect—that’s what makes the real difference. In short, all of this data helps them to determine the next markets for their distribution efforts. Where should they be selling Victory based on social demand. 

And social media isn’t just helping with distribution efforts, but also promotional efforts too. According to Dave Speers, Victory’s marketing guru, Foursquare is one tool that has “unlocked” (pardon the pun), insights into their customers. Victory has teamed up with the Foursquare developers to launch the very first ‘Mayor promo’ via Foursquare. What does this mean for Victory customers? Well, if they grab the mayor badge for Victory upon check in at the Victory Brew Pub in Downingtown, they are treated with a special Mayor Hat, sash and two beer tickets per visit to give away to anyone at the pub. These efforts to reward customers came as a direct response to patterns and trends recognized in social media.

(A special thanks to Dave Speers for sharing some insights into Victory’s marketing mix efforts!)

So, there you have it…three examples of how social media engagement is changing business operations as we know them (and are comfortable with!) today.

How has social media engagement changed your marketing mix?

[Image Sources: Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, Image 4]

According to a recent study by R2Integrated, one half of all companies now say they have a social media strategy.  For those who don’t, the biggest single obstacle to implementing social media is a perception that social media ROI is difficult or impossible to prove (numerous other studies througout 2009 and 2010 found this to be the most often cited reason for not having a social media program). 

I don’t really understand this rationale.  Here’s why:

1.) We aren’t achieving perfect ROI measurement in other channels (we can’t even fully measure the ROI of search in every scenario).  Even where measurement is pretty good, marketers often don’t take advantage of the measurement capabilities available to them (what percentage of your Web Analytics program do you really use?  10%?).  In other words, marketers regularly invest in tactics that can’t be measured, or can’t be measured fully, or that they don’t measure even if they can.  

2.) When you really think about it, there is no shortage of social media metrics (see our social media measurement white paper for some examples) and countless ways to slice, dice and calculate derivatives of data points from various sources in order to uncover valuable insights (this is what Social Snap does).  True, tracking results and analyzing indicative data often falls short of perfect, smoking gun ROI measurement…but, see #1 above.

I’m not suggesting that measuring social isn’t complicated.  It is, and in many ways it is more difficult than other channels.  Especially if you consider measurement complexities like the multiplier effect.  The multiplier effect may be more exaggerated, or at the very least, work differently with social in the mix than combinations we are accustomed to seeing/measuring (i.e., a prospect hears an ad on the radio and then sees an ad in a magazine for the same product, or sees a brand in various places on the Internet and then has it served up  in a search result, etc.).

Consider the recent Nielsen study found that advertising effectiveness was increased substantially when ads were combined with a social element.   Facebook users who were exposed to both a homepage ad and brand mentions in their newsfeed were three times as likely to recall the ad and be aware of the brand then users who viewed the homepage ad only.  Purchase intent was four times as high among viewers who were exposed to both an ad and a social component.

But would we expect to see the multiplier effect work differently depending on the connectedness and trust of a particular community?  Purchase influence varies widely based on trust and loosely connected communities will not have the same trust level as a community where relationships are stronger.

At the end of the day, measuring social will never be easy and never get “solved”.  Its just changing too fast and in a sense, we are (as is often the case in an environment driven by disruptive technologies) using our old ideas and understanding of marketing to make sense of something that lives on a very different planet. 

In that scenario, how wise is it to remain on the sidelines?

Getting great results from the Google content network doesn’t have to be difficult, but it can get tricky if you treat it the same way you would a search campaign.  Too often people either just turn on content in a search campaign or duplicate the search campaign as a content targeted campaign.  This often leads to less than optimal results.  In order to avoid creating a content targeted campaign that isn’t setup for success, there are a few easy steps that can be taken which involve using free tools.

The first step relates to your keywords.  In the content network, you can generally use broader keywords than you do for search targeted campaigns and still get great results.  This will allow your campaign to have a greater reach within your target audience.  Finding these broader keywords is simply a matter of using the keyword research tools that are available from the search engines.

Once you have your keywords set, the second step is finding specific sites that are relevant to your campaign and can be targeted through the content network.  A great tool to use is Google Ad Planner.  Ad Planner can be used to find similar audiences to your site and find sites that relate to the keywords in your campaign.

To find sites that relate to the keywords in your campaign, simply add a list of keywords from your campaign into the tool and it will return related sites.  You can then refine the list of sites using a variety of filtering options to find the most relevant sites for your campaign.  You then simply add these sites in as managed placements in your campaign.

You can also use Google Ad Planner to find sites that have a similar audience to your site.  To do this, you enter in your domain and it will return demographic data for you site as well as other sites visited by visitors who come to your site.  This will allow you to then use the tool to find sites that have similar audiences to your site.  These can then also be targeted as managed placements in your campaign.

Lastly, you should make use of your web analytics data to find relevant sites to target through the content network.  Go through your list of top referring sites and see which ones are driving high quality traffic.  Put a list of together of those that are driving great traffic and then see if you can target them specifically through the content network.

Once you’ve gone through these simple steps, you’ll be ready to launch your content targeted campaign.  Once the campaign has launched, you’ll have to make sure you’re very vigilant in optimizing the performance of the campaign in order to maximize your results.

Have you ever really taken a hard look at where your Yahoo PPC traffic is really coming from?  Recently I was working on a web analytics project for a client and was doing a deep dive into their referring sites.  I noticed a number of sites that were driving a fairly high number of visits, but none of them were converting.  I dug deeper and began to notice some strange abnormalities.

These sites appeared to be some of the “made for adsense” type sites that only have ads.  They had some navigation and a search box, but everything always led to ads.  I could see that all the traffic coming from these sites had PPC tracking strings so I figured it was from the Google content network.

Google AdWords, however, wasn’t reporting any clicks from any of these domains.  I was a bit perplexed and so I went back to take a closer look at the tracking stings.  I was very surprised to see that they were from Yahoo.  The reason why I was so surprised was that the client isn’t running on the Yahoo content network.

I figured somehow the content network had been turned on by mistake, but that was not the case.  I kept poking around Yahoo and to my surprise found a Referrer report (which apparently is new as of the middle of October).  There I could see all the sites that Yahoo apparently deems to be “search” partners when in fact the only available content on the site are Yahoo ads.

In a few campaigns well over 50% of the monthly budget had come from these so called “search” partners with zero conversions.  These domains are now blocked, but that doesn’t mean the client or I am happy.

There will need to be follow-up calls with Yahoo to figure out how these sites can possibly be regarded as “search” partners.  In addition Yahoo only allows you to block 500 domains, so what is the client supposed to do once they reach that threshold?

Many questions still need to be answered, but I would strongly suggest doing a deep analysis using your web analytics data to see where exactly Yahoo is showing your ads.

Recently my husband and I joined a boating club. I can’t tell you how great it has been.  If you are thinking of buying a boat, I recommend re-thinking that idea and looking into Freedom Boat Club.  You show up, the boat is ready for you, clean and full of gas.  You take it out for a few hours and just return it.  No hassle of towing the boat back home or cleaning the boat, etc.  You get the picture.

For the past few weekends we’ve gone out on the boat.  Being a nice guy, my husband has been ‘captain’ each time, allowing me to hang out on the bow (front) of the boat, enjoy a few cocktails and get some sun, while he responsibly drank bottled water and drove the boat.

I knew at some point I have to actually learn to drive the boat.  Although I passed the online boating course, I had not ever driven a boat.  Not being the best (car) driver, I was not so excited to learn how to drive the boat.  This was largely because many vacationers who rent a pontoon boat or jet ski don’t have to know anything about the boating rules and regulations.  So driving a boat is a much more proactive, defensive experience than driving a car.

But to be fair I had to learn.  Suffice to say this past weekend was not my favorite boating experience or my finest moment.  Paying attention to the other boaters, trying to prepare for and then react to their actions is a LOT of work.

Take one example, the wake.  In my previous, front of the boat experience wake made the ride fun.  My only concern was to make sure the cocktail was in the cup-holder so my drink didn’t spill.   My ‘at the helm’ example was completely different – slow down if I was going too fast so I wouldn’t flip the boat (probably wouldn’t have happened, but in my mind it was a possibility), steer into the wake (what?) and then speed up to get through it as the boat shook and bounced from side to side.  To me that feeling was completely out of control.  The ‘going fast as the boat shakes from side to side’ was fun while lounging comfortably on the front of the boat.  The experience at the wheel, terrifying!

But I will, in time, get better and more comfortable with driving the boat.  And even become able to take the boat out myself with friends.  It definitely will be worth it.

Now how does that long story relate to analytics?  Many companies are still in front of the boat mode with their analytics.  Each month the marketers present a powerpoint with their web reports – visits, unique visits, year over year or quarter over quarter, and maybe some revenue (revenue that if you compared to actual sales data was not even close).  Everyone left the meeting happy since the lines on the charts were slightly larger and the trends were moving in positive direction, even if ever so slightly, or if there was a bad month, everyone understood, the economy is bad.

But effective marketers drive the boat.  It is scary.  It takes time and work.  But the results are worth it.  These data-driven companies excel at using information from their web analytics, teaming it with actual sales and maybe even competitive information and creating a plan that is fluid.  They analyze what is working and what is not.  If they can’t fix the ‘what is not’ they stop spending on those campaigns and move their budget to what is working.

Their presentations go beyond simple metrics.  They explain their results in business terms that executives can understand and appreciate.  They get bigger budgets (and even raises…even in this bad economy).

So what is it going to take to get you off the bow and behind the wheel?

1. Over at Take it in-house, we just posted an audio interview with Philip Maher, founder of Intuitive Investments and former Director of Interactive Strategy at RH Donnelley.
2. Check out Li Evan’s latest article on Search Engine Watch, Can Social Media Be Measured?
3. And if you haven’t downloaded it yet, grab our newest white paper on measuring social media, Social Media Impact: Unicorn or Elephant?

Are you using Google Analytics?  Are you currently doing any A/B or multivariate testing on your site?  I’d be willing to guess that the number of ‘yes’ answers to the second question is a fraction of the first.  By not testing, however, you’re missing out on a large opportunity to increase sales, leads, sign-ups, etc.  Google would like to change this in hopes that it will benefit your site and in turn benefit their bottom line.

If your site can convert traffic (especially PPC) at a higher rate, then the cost-per-conversion of your marketing campaigns will decrease.  Google hopes that you’d then either be willing to bid more for those PPC keywords that drive conversions or expand your marketing campaigns into other Google revenue sources such as banner ads.

In order to facilitate this, Google has recently released a short video titled Google Website Optimizer in 60 Seconds.  It basically tells you how to use Google Analytics to find the landing pages that you should initially focus your efforts on and then gives you a very quick 30 second “how to” on using Google Website Optimizer.

Check it out and happy testing.

Recently we’ve had a number of clients who’ve come to us wanting to evaluate their current web analytics package to see if it’s still the right package for them.  Sometimes they’ve done a bit of research on their own and have a basic understanding of a few options and the capabilities of each.  In other cases they don’t know anything about the differences between the packages.  One aspect that seems to be true for all of them, however, is that they all want to know about Google Analytics.

They know it’s free and that can be very attractive to a company that is cutting costs to try and weather the recession.  What they don’t know is if it will fit their needs and that is a critical question to ask when choosing a web analytics package.  The topic is often brought up in forums and written about across various blogs.  Sometimes the posters or bloggers view Google Analytics in a positive light and in other cases more negatively.  What is constant is that there can often be information that gets put out there that may not be completely accurate.  The folks over at Google Analytics have  been following these blog posts and forum threads and decided that it was time to put out a post of their own.  The post aims to debunk the top ten myths about Google Analytics.

The post definitely addresses many of the issues that get brought up regarding Google Analytics and can certainly be used as a reference if you’re going through the process of evaluating the right web analytics package for your company.  If you’re not sure how to go about the process of choosing a web analytics package or just simply don’t have the time then contact us.  We can help guide you through the entire process from choosing the right package to correctly implementing it so that it properly tracks all the metrics that tie into your site goals.

If you are in marketing, you might be a little stressed right now.  The pressure is on to show ROI.  You are constantly trying to accomplish more with less.  Technology and digital channels are evolving at a rapid fire pace and you had better keep up if you’re going to survive.  And job security?  Not much of a concept anymore, no matter what your line of work.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could turn down the noise and focus on one or two things that would have the biggest impact?

You can. 

See if you can answer the following questions:
• Can you measure the actual revenue generated by specific marketing campaigns?
• Do you know which digital marketing channel currently converts the most leads or sales and costs the least?
• Does your marketing department or agency make changes to a campaign based on results while the campaign is active (as opposed to waiting until the campaign is over)?

If you answered “no”, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger.  A 2007 Conference Board study found that one third of the companies surveyed were making no attempts to measure marketing ROI.  In a more recent study (Alterian, 2009), less than half of marketers surveyed said they plan to use analytics to measure campaigns.

Digital marketing has, in many ways, developed faster than the tools to measure it.  Add in resistance to change, lack of skilled staff trained in measurement best practices, and pressure to score a home run YESTERDAY – it’s enough to drive the sanest marketer to choose finger crossing and a Hail Mary or two over facing the measurement monster. 

And yet, if you make even small improvements in your measurement infrastructure and capabilities, you can achieve big improvements in ROI.

Where should you start? 

Ask yourself what it would take to answer “yes” to the questions above.  How much would it cost?  How would you make the ROI case to the C Suite?

Or, stop asking yourself questions (before someone notices that you are talking to yourself) and call us.  We love a good measurement hairball.

Times are tough.  To say that the economy is bad is an understatement.  So, in absence of actually trying to do a good job,  here are seven ways to create job security for you and your marketing team in 2009 using the tried and true method of smoke and mirrors.

1.  Traditional media is dead.   Says who?
You can’t improve what you can’t measure.  Measuring the success of traditional media buys like print, TV, or radio spots is difficult.  Perfect!!  You have done your job by running the campaigns.  Now, it is the sales department’s responsibility.  If no sales come from those campaigns, clearly it is not your department’s fault.

2.  2009 Media Plan = Unwavering
Sure, lots of time was spent in 2008 determining what was working and what was not, and shifting your spend to focus on the most effective campaigns.  But…let’s face it, that was exhausting.  You know that media plan you created at the end of last year for 2009?… commit and stick to your guns. 

You have done the marketing research that you were expected to do and that everyone has approved.  How much could the landscape really change during 2009?  And, if there are problems, hey, they approved the plan.

3.  Google – Are you being evil?
We all know that historically pay-per-click has been one of the most cost-efficient ways of marketing.  But, it is 2009 now.  Think of all of the challenges…click fraud, rising keyword costs, increased competition.  It is certainly the search engines fault now if your campaigns are not successful.

4.  Very, very important – Make enemies with IT
It is MUCH easier to blame the enemy. If executives want to hold you accountable for ROI, data, or analytics stand tall and point the finger at your enemies in IT.  You would have certainly had the proof to show how successful your campaigns were if only IT had helped you out.

5.  ROI – So very 2008
Explain to your executives that ROI is an overused, overrated metric.  Just because you can track things, doesn’t mean you should.  There are many more important metrics (see #6).

6. 2009 – Choose your metrics wisely
There are so many metrics available to you these days, and plenty that most executives will have no idea what they mean (read…cannot question whether good or bad, successful or not).  Hits, bring them back….meaningless minutia with an explanation laden with technical jargon, PERFECT!! 

Geography, another good one… usually pretty inaccurate but everyone enjoys this stat as they can mentally try to figure out who they know that may be causing this traffic.  Mobile Devices….okay you and I know it probably accounts for less than 3% of the traffic, but isn’t it cool that people are looking at our site on their iPhone.  We are so cutting edge!

7.  Analytics – Wait, why bother?
You did not get into the interesting, creative field of marketing to be tied to spreadsheets, come on.  And besides, who really cares about the numbers.  If executives ask for reports or numbers, explain to them that they are not asking for Web design ideas from the accounting department…so, why is there this double standard?

I hope this list has been helpful.  These are just the top ideas that came to mind.  Feel free to let me know if there are more that I have missed.

Good luck in 2009!