Marketing Tactegy

Haiti and Twitter - Interesting analysis

As I have mentioned to many of you we are close to completing our book project on the ROI of social media and we decided to take a quick look at trending topics and thought about what the response was in the Twitterverse.

Below is a chart from Trendistic.com – I think you’ll like this application.  Anyway, this chart shows the level of 'Haiti' activity once the earthquake hit.  It hit about 4:30PM local time or 2:30 PM EST.  

 

It took about 2 hours for news of the event to hit the Twitterverse (this is our estimate), because you can see when CNN latched on to the catastrophe story they, too, became a major topic in the Twitterverse.  So within the time CNN (here, used as a proxy for all news sources) picked up the story, about 3% of the tweets had a mention about Haiti.  The next day, they continued with the story and it was obvious how big of a disaster it was.  Haiti traffic exceeded 6% and then generally has leveled off to the 6% level for the last few days, with various ups and downs.

 

Also, of course is the incredible response using mobile donations (Text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross).  Already, the 90999 text message has delivered millions of dollars to relief for those in Haiti.  I hope you, too, will also contribute.  In the near future I will look at this 'campaign' as well to discover some interesting insights.

Check us out here for some upcoming events.

Let me know what you think

Building a business case for social media marketing

I will be moderating a panel discussion at the upcoming Measure Up Conference in Chicago March 10 - 12, ( http://bit.ly/4zkuuD ) on this topic. If you have any thoughts or questions you would like to ask the panelists, please let me know. It would be great to start a LinkedIn Discussion on this and use the issues brought forward here as input for the conference. 

Actually, there are also a bunch of sessions on WOM and social media, and measuring results so this will be a great way to start the discussion ahead of the actual physical conference. 

The panelists include the VP of Marketing at the San Diego Zoo and the CMO of Atlanta Gas Light. 

It should be pretty interesting. 

Social Media ROI Interview Series

Steven Groves of the Social Media Bible and I are embarking on a series of interviews on the topic of the ROI of Social Media.  The first in this series was with Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6.  We will be doing many more and it should be a very interesting series of metrics and measurements to drive increased ROI in Social Media.

Check them out here: http://socialmediabible.ning.com/profiles/blogs/roi-of-social-media-series.

Let me know what you think.

ROI of Social Media White Paper

It’s been awhile since I have had time to post anything, but I did want to finally get this white paper up on social media metrics and ROI.  I was traveling in Asia and Australia, talking about the ROI of social media and I received some great input.  Although the US is definitely winning the race with social media, China is on the rise.

Interestingly, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (these are the ones I tested) are all blocked.  Renren and Douban, Xiaonei and many others are already hosting over 100 million accounts and it will be hard to keep up with that growth.  It will also be interesting to see how this growth will be affected by the use of non-latin characters in domain names.

The ROI of social media is clearly a hot topic and one that will have a series of posts from me and certainly many others.  I think the big issue is how to differentiate from the simple measurements typically associated with the Internet and Web 2.0 and move into the more complex measurements of indirect, combined and brand effects. This white paper is a first attempt to start to delineate these key issues.

Please go to http://www.marketing-calculator.com/DownloadNow.aspx

I look forward to your comments and input.

Also, I started a ROI of Social Media group on LinkedIn.  Please join to learn more about this hot topic.

The top 3 Marketing Inventions/Innovations

Last week I kicked off a short survey of what the top 3 marketing inventions/innovations are.  The answers break down into a few categories.  You may disagree with my classifications, but here are the results:

Historical (not listed in historical order)

• The Internet
• Television & radio
• The Gutenberg printing press
• The wheel
• The microprocessor
• Fire

Market modeling related

• Predictive modeling/churn modeling
• ROMI/ROO, MMM, Return on Brand Investment

Great marketers

• Steve Jobs
• Guy Kawasaki
• Mark Cuban

Technology and tools

• Internet (also mentioned above)
• LinkedIn
• Spell Check
• Personalized broadcast Integrated email and CRM
• Internet
• Social Media
• Twitter
• Online advertising
• Infomercials
• FSIs

Marketing Concepts

• Understanding consumer behavior
• Value appropriation
• Adaptation to new technologies
• Fully integrated Marcom processes
• SPIN
• Unique Selling Proposition
• Lead nurturing
• Strategy
• Retention
• Innovation
• SWOT Analysis
• Ansoff’s Matrix
• The art of differentiation
• Become part of the customer’s life
• Continuous product innovation
• Listen to the customer
• Alphabet soup:

The 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion)

The 3Cs (Customers, Channel, Competition)

The 4Cs (Customer needs, Cost to customer, Convenience to customer, Communication)

+3Ps (People, Process, Physical evidence)

The 4Rs and a P (Referrals, Retention, Repeat business, Reactivation, Prospecting)

The 16Ps

• AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action)
• Changing people’s attitude

Blatant self-promotion

• (none repeated here)

It’s great to see the diversity of input on various marketing terms and techniques.  I also like the historical references which make it all possible.  It is also a pretty good list of different concepts that marketers feel strongly about.

As for the three top marketers offered, they represent sources of great ideas and to stay abreast of hot new topics we should be following their blogs and other writings.

Thanks to everyone that provided feedback.  Let me know if you have any other thoughts.

MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2009

I just got back to my desk after a week of vacation and 2 days of conferencing at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum and I must say, the conference was one of the best I've been to. I haven't figured out what the underlying reasons were for this reaction, but it was nevertheless a great opportunity to network and change the way you think.

Top events at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum

Here are a few things that absolutely stood out:

1. Sandy Carter's talk (from IBM) on the actions they are taking in the social media space. What a great set of examples. (http://www.booksbysandy.com/)
2. Amy Africa's website optimization 'family feud'. The format was put on as a family feud instead of the typical PowerPoint and speech with case studies. It was filled with facts and ideas that might not even fit into Santa's gift bag. What a great, invigorating way to get key concepts across.  (http://www.eightbyeight.com/)
3. The 20 minute one-on-ones put on by experts in different fields. These included web usability, SEO, social networking and others. These were free and certainly give you some great ideas to get you out of your rut.
4. he keynotes were great.  Steven Johnson certainly made clear how he has been successful at social media and the effects of being of the cover of Time magazine.  Barry Schwartz had some interesting points about bringing forth a new moral order.

Key B2B marketing problems

But the interesting question was the difficulty B2B marketers have in determining marketing effectiveness.  Especially since they are trying to improve their marketing mixes, deliver better on corporate objectives and finally prove marketing’s contribution to sales. The key areas still looking for answers include:

• Last touch attribution
• Objectives-based budgeting v. media-based budgeting
• Sales and marketing alignment and collaboration
• The definition of a lead
• An inward-looking view of marketing as opposed to a consumer-centered approach

I’m sure there are many others.  If you have any thoughts, I would love to hear from you.

Marketing and marketing ROI in a Recession

Everyone seems to be writing on this topic so I thought I would also chime in.  Times aren’t great for marketers, unless you have a couple of key arrows in your quivers   It’s not easy to cope, when it seems like nothing is working, sales are down 30 to 40% and the company is threatening payroll cuts.  And the CFO and CEO are saying cut your advertising budgets by 30% or else.

As we put our plans in place to survive (and thrive) in this market, what we’ve seen from our clients is that consumers seem to be trading down.  Instead of purchasing extravagant or luxury items they are holding off until they have confidence about the future.  They are looking for the bare minimum, the absolute necessities and where they can get these at the best price.  Discount redemptions are going up. The value placed on a premium brand is falling.  Instead of shopping in their preferred channel, they are shopping in a channel known for low cost.  WalMart comes to mind.  WalMart reports they are doing very well across most categories, although this may also be due to lower gas prices. (February Retail Sales Stronger Than Expected, by Sarah Mahoney in MediaPost, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=101585)  Our own anecdotal evidence shows that other value brands and offerings also seem to be doing well.

Consumer behavior and choice

If this is the case, what has changed in consumer behavior and how can we potentially change our thinking to take advantage of this dynamic.  Here are a couple of thoughts and questions: 

1. Are shoppers simply trading down in their channel selection but purchasing premium brands in a value channel (as WalMart’s success might allude to).  Do marketers need to focus solely on lower price or will shoppers trade down in their channel selection and trade up once in the door?  Do we need to maintain our premium price in the value channel, or do we need to cut prices across the board?
2. If consumers have temporarily exited the category, how can marketers retrieve them in order to re-grow the category and then drive preference for their brands? 
3. Once consumers are shopping in the category how have consumer preferences changed and do brands need to change their messaging to take advantage of it.  Once consumers have chosen to purchase in a specific category consumers make choices based on a combination of their preferences for specific functional and emotional attributes.  For example, has the emotional preference for the ‘good value for the money’ brand attribute changed, or has the disutility of price changed?

I’m sure there are other questions we could start to ask ourselves and our consumers in order to determine how consumer behavior has changed and how we can potentially take advantage of these changes.

I would love to hear what you’re experiencing as you try and survive and thrive in the uncertain economy. 

I also have a question for you and that is, how do you see your marketing investments changing over the next two quarters (Q209 and Q309)?  Will spending be made to gain share in a down market, or will the finance team win and marketing will be cut to maintain margins?

I look forward to your views.