I missed this when it came out last month. I appreciate Dave Morin's blog for bringing it to my attention!
Mary Meeker was well known for her insight, especially into the impact of technology on business and lifestyles, as an analyst at Morgan Stanley. She recently joined the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the sponsors of this report.
The entire report is good and highly relevant. The speed with which new technologies are being adopted in the marketplace is absolutely scary! The ten or so slides toward the end are of most interest to me. The integration slide that shows the impact of technologies other than computers on computing itself is though-provoking. So are the summaries of trends for 2011 and beyond.
For those of us who live our lives in the world of social media, this Super Bowl stat is astonishing: E-Trade was the only advertiser among the 2009 and 2010 Super Bowl rosters to even add a tease to its Facebook or Twitter presence at the close of the ad, according to a study by Professors Chuck Tomkovick and Rama Yelkur quoted in Ad Age. Not so this year; in that article on Monday Ad Age headlines, “From Hashtags to Newsfeeds to Online Spots, Big Game Advertisers Tap Web 2.0 to Extend Buy.” (See also the Super Bowl coverage on their sidebar.)
We all know what the marketing game is. A 30-second Super Bowl ad has hovered around $3m for the past several years. That’s a lot for even the usual suspects like Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi, and Intel. The companies go all out to “create buzz,” with increasing intensity during this, the week before the big game. They prolong it as much as possible with post-game critiques that rival that of the sports programming itself. Getting the most mileage out of those expensive TV ads by leveraging other media made sense in years past. It still does; it’s just that social media has been added to the mix.
According to Ad Age and this good video on CNBC, there will be more ties to social media this year. Pepsi is running its usual Doritos “Crash the SuperBowl” contest. Pepsi Max has purchased a spot, after a year off for cause-related marketing and joined in the “Crash” contest. They are joined by Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and even the Anheuser Busch Clydesdales and the ETrade baby. In reporting on this year’s advertising (with a good link to past ads), MSNBC says, “It’s a risky proposition for companies. A social media campaign has the potential to make your loyal customers even bigger fans, or draw in new customers. But companies also have to be prepared for the fact that they can’t control what people will write or tweet about them, positive or negative.” With due respect to MSNBC— big DUH!!! Any brand marketer who doesn’t already know that—and know how to deal with it—isn’t ready for the big leagues! Coors Light is using mobile to hype its advertising using a Snap Tag on its in-store packaging. They’ve been testing this technology since spring and find it ready for the big game. It’s all about a mobile phone, a special icon, text messaging—and, of course, the ability to enter a contest and win a big prize. This article gives a good overview of how it works.
On the other hand, some brands are using the event to their advantage without actually buying an ad.
Papa John’s, who advertised last year, is taking a different approach this year. It’s giving away pizzas on game day. Of course, you have to register on their Facebook page to be eligible! But if what they told CNBC holds true and they spend about half a million dollars to put pizzas into 100,000 homes, is that a better expenditure than $3m for a TV ad? You call that one! And very important, how many fans will they add to the 1,501,026 they have now?
Bing is running a National Tailgating Championship that will culminate in Dallas this week. The first prize is “the coveted Golden Grill.” Oh, yeh? Actually, the whole thing is great fun with lots of snarky commentary like a set of contest guidelines (linked to the main contest site) full of legalese that essentially says that the judges will decide on the winner. Good for Microsoft and the Bing marketers for not taking themselves too seriously!
And most of all that master of Internet buzz The Old Spice Guy. He’s back and he’s watching the buzz about it on the web. One Super Fan will receive an early copy of the ad to be debuted the day after the Super Bowl. Oh, wow! That’s so delightfully arrogant that I’m watching for it. Stay tuned!
And I’m sure I’ve missed some other interesting or creative—or not—approaches. What else should we look for on Sunday?
I’ve always thought the subtitle of this text says it all, “Integrating Online and Offline Strategies.” That’s what our young marketers need to understand, not only the mechanics of Internet marketing but also developing campaigns and ensuring they are integrated into the overall marketing communications mix of the organization.
I’m more than pleased to announce that work has begun on the third edition of Internet Marketing. This edition has welcome enhancements. It will be published byCengage Learning, which specializes in innovative learning solutions like e-books. We expect the 3rd edition to be available in both print and electronic formats.
I’m especially delighted to welcome a new co-author to this edition. Debra Zahay-Blatz is the Restaurant.com Professor of Interactive Marketing at Northern Illinois University. She is a specialist in CRM and has taught many aspects of interactive marketing. Debra is a prime mover in the interactive marketing program at NIU and will bring both classroom and practitioner experience to the text.
We are also pleased to announce that we will be joined by Lauren Labrecque who will be helping with the all-important textbook supplements that are distributed to professors who adopt the text. You can see bios of both Debra and Lauren here.
The 3rd edition will incorporate major revisions that reflect the maturing of traditional digital marketing and the explosion of social media marketing initiatives. New chapters will focus on social media marketing and promotional and lead generation programs in B2B markets. Recent developments in Internet marketing will be reflected throughout the new edition.
College instructors who are current or potential adopters of the text should contact their campus sales representative or visit the listing on the Cengage site.
Have you already walked into a retail store and thought, “Christmas decorations and gifts already—and it’s not even Thanksgiving!!!” If you haven’t, my guess is that you haven’t been shopping for the last couple of weeks. It appears to me that as soon as Halloween decorations went out, Christmas merchandise came in. Whether you like that or not, it is time for retailers, large and small, to get serious about planning holiday promotions if they are not already in high gear. See a good article from Ad Age Digital (free registration required).
I recently ran into a good post on how to prepare your social media channels for the holiday season. Here are the recommendations:
1. Give your social media profiles a makeover. That includes making sure your profiles and maps are complete and correct on Google Places and Yahoo! Local Search. 2. Build your followers and connections. They are valuable themselves; they also offer connections to their networks. 3. Get more reviews. Product reviews are incredibly important, whether on your site or on third-part review sites. Encourage your followers to review your products or services and to share them. 4. Special offers for your followers. What can I say? The Target site already has offers up. Many of these are appropriate to both large and small retailers. It’s interesting that they seem to be focusing on Cyber Monday instead of Black Friday. 5. Engage in the conversation. Do you have a Facebook page? Are you responding to customers when they complain or ask for information? Take a look at some of the recent traffic on the Hanes Wall on Facebook. They answer information requests, apologize for things like out of stock items and thank people for compliments. All good! 6. Integrate social media with other marketing. That’s essential, whether it’s your website or broadcast or print advertising, or some combination. Integration is key to getting the message out and experiencing positive results. 7. Commit to creating some quality holiday content. I was in a local retail store over the weekend and heard a video featuring Ming Tsai, one of my gurus. I think he was promoting a line of cookware. The one-unit local retailer has a good website, but I didn’t see any evidence of product videos. My guess is that Ming would have been glad to have them link to or upload his promotional video. Make use of whatever good content is available and create your own when necessary. This store also has some acceptable local TV advertising; no ad videos seen on the site. Opportunities missed!
Also be sure to inventory your search marketing, whether optimized pages or PPC. According to a recent report: • More than three-quarters of respondents search to learn more about a product or service after seeing an ad elsewhere.• Before moving on to a different information source, searchers will modify their search and try again (89%), try a different search engine (89%), and go through multiple search results pages if necessary (79%)
Is this all worth the effort? According to Ad Age:
Nearly 80% of consumers plan to do at least some of their shopping online this season, according to the National Retail Federation and BigResearch. One-sixth will do more than half of their holiday shopping online.
Sergio Balegno, Research Director for Marketing Sherpa, is a recognized thought leader in Internet marketing best practices. He gave a superb guest lecture in my social media marketing class last week. There was one thing in particular that he articulated much better than I’ve been able to do. It has to do with organizing your ‘traditional’ Internet and social media marketing around well-defined hubs.
It’s clear that any Internet marketing effort needs to have an activity hub. In the early days—before social media—it was equally clear that the hub was the website. All marketing efforts, PPC and display advertising—pointed there and Internet marketing objectives were achieved there. Objectives might have been driving traffic to retail stores, providing content for customer acquisition and retention, conducting ecommerce, or others as appropriate for the enterprise marketing strategy. Whatever the Internet marketing objective, the website was needed to achieve it.
Enter social media and our efforts to understand how to integrate these networks effectively into our marketing strategy. What is the correct centerpiece of for this marketing element? Social media efforts can point back to the website, and sometimes that may make sense. But often the efforts on public networks are best pointed back to the corporate blog. Sergio used as an example the Cisco Collaboration program that I wrote about last week.
Why should social media point to the blog and not to the website? The main reason is that blog content can—and should be—updated frequently with content that supports the social media efforts with precision. By its very nature, website content is updated less frequently and often is less precisely targeted to particular user segments and/or interests.
That led me to a second ‘ah-ha’ moment--the importance of recency in achieving prominence in search engine results. I hadn’t updated my thinking from the era (a couple of years ago) when things like keywords, number of incoming links, and number of clicks were only determinants of rankings in organic search. Here’s a summary of rank determinants; click through for a mind-numbing list from seo experts. With the addition of things like news, images, and videos search results pages provide the most current as well as the most relevant content. Search any current event and see for yourself!
The take-away is this: Your website is the hub of your ‘traditional’ Internet marketing. To be direct, it’s where you can sell things or acquire sales leads. An increasing number of the people who become leads or customers are going to find you, learn more about you, and develop trust in you through social media. The blog provides timely content and connects to activities like your YouTube channel and other social networks. It points readers to your website for conversion when their time is right. Their time, not yours! That makes your blog the hub of your social media marketing.
There’s still a lot of work to do in integrating all this activity. But a clear understanding of this key principle is necessary to an efficient strategy with marketing effectiveness!
Ed Note: We've had many great speakers in this spring's Social Media Marketing course. I've blogged about some of their messages. Jeff Dunn, who in his other life is the Web Coordinator at Harvard Law School, did such a good job with this one I asked permission to post a shortened version. You can see the full post on his blog.
Dharmesh Shah (@dharmesh, VentureBeat, LinkedIn, Amazon) is a whirlwind speaker with an obvious love for what he does. Despite Dharmesh’s claim that he is not a gifted speaker or marketer, his presentation in our social media marketing class was fantastic. His body language may have shown that he was a bit uncomfortable (holding an arm behind his back while staring at the ground) but his language and presentation zoomed along at a frenetic pace. I found myself scribbling keywords and shorthand notes just to keep up with the great wisdom that was being imparted upon me and the rest of the class. A self-proclaimed “hackpreneur,” Dharmesh (I use his first name because I feel comfortable doing so after his friendly presentation) says he has earned this title because he stays up late at night (often until 2am or so) writing code and wearing his Chief Technology Officer hat for HubSpot. He is also the co-founder of HubSpot, thus the entrepreneur part of his “hackpreneur” title.
“Everyone and every business should blog.”
Dharmesh had some great nuggets of information that rang true as I thought about them after the presentation. I was far too busy trying to scribble down these gems and didn’t have enough time to digest them. When discussing who should blog, it was clear who Dharmesh thinks should take part. I agree with the caveat that everyone should be willing to put in the effort to have a relatively steady stream of useful content. Thanks to the latest web technologies, you can start a blog and have it filled with gossip and pictures in under a few minutes. (Visit wordpress.com to see how!)
“Talk about the industry’s issues, not your solution.”
I really love this one. There are too many websites out there devoted to their own personal fix for their specific industry’s problems. If you want to really have a site that gets traction by engaging your audience in something they can also participate in. You’re not going to get a very engaged audience if you offer your solution for something without giving others a chance to offer their solution as well.
“Non-profits should be benefiting from causes, not for-profits!”
This is a sad-but-true quote we really enjoyed. It’s hard to deny that companies like Starbucks have really had a bigger impact on raising funds for charities and causes. I understand that this is because companies typically have more infrastructure (financial and personnel) to make these types of campaigns actually work, but the Internet is supposedly leveling the playing field for everyone. Let’s hope causes and charities can come up with some more interactive and viral (we hate that term viral but it applies here) campaigns that generate some real interest.
“Measure what works, what doesn’t, then double down.”
This one’s pretty self-explanatory and deserves to be put in super duper bold letters here. Being successful in marketing, especially social media marketing, is all about taking risks and figuring out what works. When you don’t do both of these things, you’re destined for failure. While it’s very hard to measure what works, there are ways. In fact, HubSpot has so many Graders like TwitterGrader and WebsiteGrader, they’re already on the bleeding edge of figuring out how to measure what works and what does not.
“Remove the friction in marketing.”
Making it easy for someone to actually purchase stuff, sign up for something, or just take part in any way is something that would seem like a no brainer. Sadly, it’s not. Many places spend all their time and effort raising interest in their website…only to find users get confused and leave the site, never to return.
“Kittens always work.”
Dharmesh’s presentation featured slides with interesting images and very little text on the screen. This is my favorite style of creating presentations since it allows the audience to focus on what you’re saying, not reading tiny print on a screen. No one remembers the fine print anyway. Dharmesh’s presentation had a picture of a kitten and it got a bit of laughter…to which Dharmesh replied that kittens always work. Everyone seems to love them and have the same reaction to them.
“Even normal people use Twitter now.”
In its infancy (just a couple years ago), Twitter was a way for a small number of people to micro-blog. It has slowly been able to begin shedding this reputation after it got embraced by celebrities and Facebook users. Facebook went through a similar reputation issue but has now actually been embraced by middle-aged women (another point brought up by Dharmesh). So when asked if its worth using Twitter, you can simply reply using Dharmesh’s words: even normal people use Twitter. He even has the proof over at HubSpot. Dharmesh says that Twitter has been delivering “real dollars into the door.”
“It’s not about the number of followers. It’s about having people who listen. I’d rather have 50 active people than 5,000 deaf followers.”
I absolutely agree. A couple years ago, I started the @Harvard_Law Twitter account (it has a 99.8 Twitter Grader ranking) with a very small but attentive audience. The non-academic world seemed to be clamoring for any news about what’s happening inside the walls of Harvard. The follower count for the account was not enormous, still isn’t, but it’s obtained a very attentive and vocal following who are happy to @mention, DM, or retweet any question or update posted on the account. Dharmesh has a great point and it’s not an easy task to cultivate a high quality following. It happens over time. It took nearly a year and a half to develop a devoted fan base for me.
“Tweet and retweet from 1pm to 5pm”
HubSpot is all about data. They have examined the best times to tweet something and have it noticed. That time period is any weekday from 1pm to 5pm. That’s why this post was published around 2pm on a Monday, one of the busiest times on the Internet. People seem to be bored at work or just back from lunch, not ready to embrace the week.
“The more you tweet about yourself, the less others will.”
If Ashton Kutcher weren’t a celebrity, would anyone be following him? Dharmesh makes a great point that, from a marketing perspective, it’s all about engaging the audience. It’s hard to feel engaged when someone is tweeting about something you can’t relate to. If, instead, that person were writing about their passion for a broader subject, it’s more likely to engage followers. I personally think people need to stick with their preferred style of tweeting since followers will notice if your style has changed. Just ask @ComcastCares, the account who people revolted against when the main administrator went on vacation and put someone else in charge!
“When you’re getting star talent, you’re renting not buying.”
Dharmesh understands the world of obtaining the best and brightest for his business. There are so many options in the world of technology that it is very hard to make someone’s job everything they could ever want. Dharmesh elaborated on this point, saying that “nothing is forever” and that it’s important to keep in mind who owns what when it comes to employees. For example, does HubSpot own an employee’s personal Twitter account? Of course not. Was it used to promote HubSpot? Probably. It’s a tricky situation and not something to ignore.
“Google Buzz was a data play to head off Facebook.”
It really doesn’t matter if Google Buzz overtakes Facebook. It will probably never happen. The reason Google introduced Buzz was so they could get at the tremendous amount of data currently hidden behind Facebook’s server walls. This way, Google can get a taste of what their users are doing socially and not just on GMail, Docs, etc. Conclusion
I enjoyed Dharmesh’s presentation and was so amped afterwards that I posted a job listing I would have loved to apply to. I am happily employed and doing this blog in my spare time (not much these days!). If you’re interested in working for someone like Dharmesh, check out the posting. In the meantime, there is a lot of info out there about Dharmesh, HubSpot, and social media. Happy surfing!
You might remember that March 2000 was the month that the dot.com bubble busted sending the overvalued high tech stocks in a tailspin and launching the first major financial crisis of the millennium. After making headlines and capturing the imagination of the whole world the iconic names of the 90s like Webvan, Kozmo, Pets.com and Boo.com made once more headlines with their highly publicized demise. For many this was the end of the e-commerce experiment. Ten years after, despite a few hickups, the web seems to be more robust than ever. Is 2010 going to be a milestone year in online marketing: According to an Outsell just published study advertisers plan to spend more on digital and online marketing and advertising than on print. E-Marketing is getting the mainstram! I am not surprised, this was just a matter of time. For field marketers but also for Marketing educators and researchers new opportunities and cllallenges ahead.
It’s been clear for a week or two how the senate election in Massachusetts was going to end. But that doesn’t make it easier for people in and out of the state to accept. For the record, I’m a registered independent, on the email lists of both John Kerry and Barak Obama. If you mined both databases you’d find that I contribute early--important in politics. Not large amounts generally, but I did come close to maxing out in support of Obama. Ok, now you know more about me that I’m comfortable revealing, but it’s important to the story of why Martha Coakley lost when she was 30 points ahead for most of the campaign. I’m sure I’m not the only one who will say that it’s a textbook lesson in missed opportunities, but I’d like to give a marketing perspective.
1. Bad candidate. Snippy comments like ‘am I supposed to stand on a cold street corner and shake hands’ (not a direct quote, but you get the idea). That on a (cold) weekend when Scott Brown was all over the airwaves standing on a street corner shaking hands. 2. Bad messaging. Generic, appeals like ‘I’ll go to Washington and support health care for all’ (again not a direct quote). It’s typical of how I interpreted all of her ads: I’ll go to Washington and vote the straight party line. I don’t think that fits the mood of the electorate. BTW; Massachusetts has universal health care with an individual mandate. It actually works pretty well. You either submit proof of insurance with your state tax form or pay a fine. It took a while for them to get systems in place to help people get insurance, but it seems to be working ok now. This election wasn’t about health care per se. As I read it the main issue was government and government spending out of control.
3. Really bad campaign management. • She announced her candidacy last summer and essentially disappeared for about 3 months, until a week or so before the primary election. She was 30 points ahead, and it made sense to save money, but no foundation was being built. • The foundation needed was donors and an email list. Both Kerry and Obama have retained control of their lists but they make them available for acquisition on a limited basis from what I see. I never received a donor solicitation or anything else directly from the Coakley campaign. When they began to panic, senators and democratic campaign committees began forwarding her emails. Small Coakley list? I think so. The email sign up is under the Get Involved tab on her site. Feels like kind of an afterthought. And when you go there, just a page asking for email and zip code. Nothing about what you’ll get, no privacy statement. Not best practices for any brand. • When things started to turn about the first of the year the campaign had nothing to fall back on except fund-raise out of state (not a good image, given the nature of the campaign) and robo calls. Toward the end, I was getting maybe a dozen a day. I have ANI, so I didn’t answer them. Some did record, including one from the candidate on election day saying; “I know you’re getting a lot of these calls, but. . .” Is that going to affect behavior? Not unless maybe you forgot that yesterday was election day and that was pretty hard to do! • Both candidates used direct mail and rental lists. I got two from Scott Brown the same day last week, obviously different lists. The same day I got one from Martha Coakley, also a rental list—thanks for knowing that I’m a loyalist! • I saw Scott Brown ads all over the Internet during the last week. They were on sites like TechCrunch that would get traffic from Gen X and Gen Y techies, a large population in Massachusetts and likely to be independent voters. I saw no Coakley ads. • Both had active Facebook and Twitter programs. I didn’t follow either—once again I was never asked—but the Boston Phoenix did. Another clear edge for Brown, apparently. I didn't see much PPC advertising for either, but I wasn't paying a lot of attention.
Neither campaign got below the surface of issues and that seemed to suit both of them for different reasons. I’ll leave it to political pundits to dissect the issues; just don’t believe all the nattering about health care as an issue; that’s also superficial.The impact, however, may be large; the media is not good at separating the two.
One comment last night did strike me. I think it was David Gergen who pointed out that the polls began to turn on the news of the sweetheart deals with Senators Nelson and Landrieu to win their health care votes. That was late November, and the turn makes sense from what I was seeing in terms of voter issues.
So this may have been a flawed brand from the beginning. But there is no doubt that the campaign did not speak to voter concerns—they could have been doing some serious listening last fall and some crafting of messages. In the end, when the crunch came, they had no way to reach a critical mass of supporters with a message that resonated.
I was told not long ago that this online media stuff was easy and it didn’t take much time. So wrong! Unless you have the strategy and the tools in place, you cannot react to either the good or the bad events that affect your brand! That’s the marketing message from this election. I wish I thought it was the only message.
Isn’t it what we’d all like to achieve—having our customers do the work for us? We all know it’s not that easy, but t-shirt site Threadless has built a community that powers both product development and sales. Read about it in Chief Marketer’s new e-magazine.
It’s another of those edgy sites that got started almost by accident. They made a lot of mistakes in the early days, when it was described as a “crowdsourcing” model. Today they are careful to describe it as a “community” model, pointing out that crowdsourcing implies a random group of individuals while a community has to be carefully nurtured.
Ecommerce. Threadless is selling t-shirts on both Facebook and Twitter. Did you know you could do that? Facebook has a Marketplace although you pretty much have to know it exists in order to be able to find it. (Why doesn’t Facebook work on its navigation structure???), Steven Walling of ReadWriteWeb tried the Twitter version and he has issues with it—worth reading!
Privacy. Once again, there is none! I didn’t go as far as Steve Walling did on Twitter, but I did click on the box to find out what was required to sign in on Twitter. What I found was a box requesting permission for Twitter Tees to access my Twitter account. I don’t do that (at least I thought I didn’t). The permission box says you can revoke the permission by going to your Settings page. I looked at my Settings page; there are two apps there that I apparently have given permission to, neither of which I remembered—scary!
On Facebook I found two interesting issues. The more perplexing one is that I was on the New Tees! page yesterday. Today, when I went on again, I found a comment box with my account picture beside it beside every product; and no, I didn’t give either Facebook or Threadless any permissions. When I went to the Marketplace page I found a row of pictures across the bottom—Facebook friends of mine from around the world who are using Facebook Marketplace. They are all connected to me, so I guess that’s ok. I do have a bit of a problem with the fact that they captured my visit and, in effect, reported it publicly. However, I choose not to be upset; it’s what you should expect on Facebook.
So we are left with two questions; does Twitter offer the opportunity to create a stable e-commerce platform. You’ll have to stay tuned on that one. Second, are you comfortable—more important, will your customers be comfortable—with Facebook’s stated policy of linking everyone to everyone and everything? It goes back to my oft-repeated warning to be careful what you do and what you expect your customers to do.
Threadless has made a great business with their community-based model. I’d be willing to bet that their Facebook and Twitter sales account for only a small part of their total revenue. Customer engagement and customer acquisition are fundamental on the network platforms and sales are a by-product. That seems to describe the scene at present; it could change over time.
What should clearly grow, however, is the importance and value of a vibrant customer community. Cam Balzer said in Forbes recently:
The secret isn't growing a huge fan base. We have 100,000 Facebook fans, but those fans have all come to us organically. We believe the more organic the growth, the more loyal the fans, the more likely they will be repeat customers.
Amen to that—whichever platform you are talking about!
It is no secret that the best way to launch a product today is the persuade the New Influencers to write something about your product in their blog. Top blogs attract millions of visitors every day and are linked to thousand other blogs creating this way a tremendous communication effect about any product they mention. A recent decision of the US Federal Trade Commission attempting to increase the transparency of such product endorsement testimonials requires bloggers to mention explicitly in their site what they get in return: free products, money (what about paid vacations in Hawaii?). See also the news in the CNN A good move (Maybe the European Commission should look to this issue also) although I do not expect to bring any important changes in the "blogsphere". Most high caliber blogs will comply (some do this already without having to) since their reputation and trustworthiness is largely based on openness and sincerity. It will be interesting though to see if there are any exceptions to the rule and if some blogs are not as independent as they claim to be.
You are a big or small company and you are confronted with problems like the following: You look for a method of specifically binding DNA, you need urgently a new method for hair root removal or you are desperate to find how to sample leaf tissue**! You do not have the expertise in-house so what do you do? You try to find another company having the solution and make a deal about royalties to use their technology (something that can be quite costly)or you find and hire someone who can find a solution for you, right?
Wrong! You can get tens or hundreds of solutions and choose the best by placing a challenge in the crouwdsourcing site INNOCENTIVE; this will cost you between $ 5.000 to maybe $ 100.000 that is the fee you decide to pay to the one who will find the best solution for you. Does this work? Just go to the Innocentive site and look for yourself.
This form of crowdsourcing becomes very popular in a fast pace. Next to proprietary crowdsourcing focused on customer creativity an increasing number of Public Crowdsourcing Portals like Innocentive match the supply and demand for very specific technical or non-technical knowledge. Some more examples of this new type of Social Media (I will update my Social Media Strategies model with this new Web 2.0 application soon) are Yet2Come, Innovation Exchange and the Dutch Battle of Concepts targeting creative students that I mentioned in an earlier post.
Is this development good or bad news for professionals? I think both depending how you look to it. I have the idea that this will be soon an issue of more general concern soon. Let's wait and see. *Do not look for this term in Wikipedia, this is a term I thought of it just now! **All these are real problems of real companies
One of the standard reviewer comments whenever I submitted a paper about Social Media Marketing is the lack of data backing the claim that Social Media Marketing positively helps the marketing strategy and therefore is necessary for strategists to include these media into their marketing toolbox. The reviewers are in principle right, there are no academic studies yet providing any ROI measurements of Social Media strategies or other similar data. Yet there are some interesting very recent publications from the practitioners’ quarters; the co-author of the Groundswell Charlene Li released a new report she wrote in co-operation with Wetpaint titled "ENGAGEMENTdb“ making the point that Social Media pays off. The study looked at how the 100 most valuable brands — as identified by the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands classification — engaged in 11 different online social media applications. The interesting thing is that the study next to measuring the "breath" and "depth" of the engagement of these brands across the different online social media channels has also found a connection between high social media engagement and an average revenue increase of about 18% over the last year versus an average revenue decrease of 6% of the least socially engaged companies. Time for us academics to look to the issue in more depth and breath.
A very extensive database of businesses involved in social media marketing. The list is not complete but new stuff is added every day since it is Wiki-based. Useful for information but also for researchers
In my post of 23 March I mentioned the Virtue - 100 Top Social Brands Index. As you possibly remember the nr 1 social brand (i.e. the brand most mentioned in Social Media) is iPhone followed by CNN and Apple. In the site of Vitrue you can now find a very useful gadget measuring and comparing the "socialness" of brands. Interestingly the name of the American President Obama seems to be more popular in social media than even iPhone.
Following my two previousposts I decided to keep a close look to developments around the Twitter fad. Events in the field tend to support my theory that Twitter will finally survive but as a commercial tool rather than an interpersonal social network as it was originally launched. I see more and more businesses, TV hosts, actors, news networks and other commercial parties using it as a personalized mass medium!! In the mean time a new marketing function emerges: The TWINTER. Pizza Hut will hire them soon: According to BizReport "Responsibilities will include sharing company insights and experiences via social media such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and YouTube plus working on PR programs. Twinterns will also be expected to attend ad shoots, marketing meetings and other corporate events while keeping an eye out for quirky content to share with fans."
I am very interested how this form of "interactive" marketing will develop, in any case I find it much more interesting than the storm of tweets from friends and "friends" on their daily activities. I think most Twitter users will be soon tired from it.
This seems to be the case, at least according to a recent report called Social Media Marketing Industry Reportauthored by Michael Stelzner. Interesting findings underlining the need to take the Web 2.0 seriously.
The Aberdeen Group conducted a study focused on the ROI of Social Media Marketing. The study identified three key performance criteria ( Return on Marketing Investment -ROMI- , Likelihood to Recommend and Customer Acquisition); after surveying 275 organizations using Social Media as marketing tools they identified three categories of businesses based on their maturity as users of Social Media as marketing tools. The study (sponsored by Visible Technologies, OpenText, ScoutLabs and Zuberance) is available on line.
A short summary: in the category of Best-in-Class performers (top 20% of aggregate performance scorers) in the past 12 months > 95% improved the likelihood of customers recommending their products or services >87% improved their ROMI >95% improved their customer acquisition rate
The study found significant differences between this group and the other two categories: The Industry Average and the Laggards. No doubt that such findings are impressive and without doubt will further raise the interest in Social Media marketing. The study seems to support the view that marketers must look to the Social Media much more seriously. Let's hope that we will soon see some more studies of this short also from the academic quarters.
It is no secret that people talk about brands online as much as they talk about everything else. How much people talk about a brand online can be indicative of interest of the public about it but also indicative that things are going wrong. (Remember the Dell exploding battery some years ago). If we accept that "Every publicity is good publicity" then it is interesting for (online) marketers to know how popular their brand is in blogs, online forums, communities and video sharing sites. This is certainly one way of using Social Media as marketing tools, the approach I call Passive (i.e. listening to the market voice) in my Web 2.0 marketing tools model.
For those interested about the top Social Brands there is the Virtue 100-Top Social Brands index. The top ten brands according to the index are: 1.iPhone 2.CNN 3.Apple 4.Disney 5.Xbox 6.Starbucks 7.iPod 8.MTV 9.Sony 10.Dell. The rest in the Virtue site.
The index is a useful tool constructed on the base of a sound methodology. It would be interesting of course any one of my colleagues attempts to measure the relationship between the usage level of the Social Media by the brand sponsors and the ranking of a brand. What is interesting also is that in the top 10 list three of the brands are media brands and that Apple dominates the list with 3 of its brands. What the index does not say is whether the online buzz about brands is positive or negative. Maybe we have to wait a bit longer for that.
p.s. In the technology blog BLORGE I recently read a story about an exploding iPhone! Hopefully an isolated incident and not the reason of the Social Media popularity of the brand.
