Marketing Tactegy

Measuring the effectiveness of social media

One of the hotter topics right now in metrics is how to measure the success of social media.  Many social marketers are looking for the answer to this seemingly simple question.  The good news is that there is a lot going on here.  As I’ve become involved in metrics and have spoken around the world on this topic I’ve learned that there are no easy answers.  There is however a framework with which to develop an answer.  (If you’d like, please visit www.marketing-calculator.com for information on a generalized marketing effectiveness framework.)

At one level the number of visitors to a social site can be one measure of success.  At the next level we have to measure the level of engagement.  Time spent on site, the number of comments, videos or other content submitted can be an indicator of success in the social media space.  Unfortunately, these measures don’t determine how successful these social marketing activities are at delivering sales in the stores.  Just like there is an indirect link between TV and in-store sales, so too, is there an indirect link between a consumers’ social media activities and sales in the store.

So we need a measure of transforming this emotional engagement into brand awareness/consideration and preference/purchase intent.  Once we’ve done this, there are a number of tools that we can use to actually calculate the effectiveness of a social marketing activity.

But this is only backward looking.  As marketers, we want to look forward into the future.  How well will this next social marketing activity drive awareness, engagement and sales in the store?  For this we need to use a number of different tools (not complex) and then put the pieces together.  However I will address this in my next post.  In the meantime if you’d like more information or discussion on this topic, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/guyrpowell) or at www.DemandROMI.com.

 

It’s not share of voice it’s share of conversation

I was just working through a social media strategy session and realized that many companies still don’t quite realize the value of social media and that it’s not just about running a good (or bad) social media campaign.  It’s about understanding the strategy for your social media, including short and long term results.

Competitive social media strategy

Looking at social media isn’t about Twitter, blogs or Facebook.  It’s about how your actions compare to the competition and how you can deliver your share of conversation.  Just as it’s about market share in the physical world, it’s about share of conversation in the social media world.

Share of Conversation

Share of voice sounds like a great outcomes metric, but voice implies a one-way conversation, not to mention the fact that it is already used to measure the value of traditional media in a competitive market.  Social media is about engagement and a two-way conversation.  There is value being transferred from the brand and value being provided by the consumer.  There is a conversation taking place and it needs to be the goal of social media activities to determine an effective strategy to improve the share of conversation.  Once that has been done, the social media strategy can start to determine how to increase share, beat the competition and do it in a way to drive brand value and market share in the physical world.

I’d love to hear from you to see if this makes sense.  Just let me know.

DemandROMI partners with iFusion Marketing and Resultrek to offer valuable Marketing Workshops

My company DemandROMI has been offering workshops on topics concerning marketing ROI, marketing effectiveness and social networking and other critical topics and we have decided to partner up with two great firms to offer new value to our audiences.

I think you’ll find them very interesting and I hope you will be able to attend.  For more information, please visit www.immergize.com – immerse and energize yourself to drive extraordinary returns for 2008.  There are four offerings:

• Social Media Marketing
• Marketing ROI for B2B and Consumer Marketers
• Success in Asia
• Product/Brand Strategy

I hope you’ll find time to attend.

Web 2.0, marketing analytics and marketing effectiveness

One thing I’ve learned through the last few years is that many marketers look at ROI simply in terms of Last Touch Attribution.  That is they only look at the last touch and ignore the value of all the previous touches.  Because of this calculation method the marketing effectiveness and marketing ROI don't tell the whole story.  Marketing analytics needs to include alot more than just the last touch to get it right.

Well the same phenomenon is occurring in Web 2.0 and social networks.  In reality when we look at Web 2.0, we need to look at the impact of all media and the cross-impact of each of the media channels.  The model has progressed along the three dimensions shown below:

• The past:  Traditional media drives the brand and sales conversion
• Now:  Traditional media drives the brand, sales conversion and web activity (on our branded site)
• The future:  Traditional media drives the brand, sales conversion, web activity (on our site) and community involvement and activity concerning the brand

With this new dimension in place we can now start to look at establishing the right kinds of success metrics in all three cases.  Interestingly, traditional media is still a major component of the past, now and the future.  Without it, most social communities would have a lot of trouble getting off the ground.  With it, the web and web 2.0 social community activity surrounding the brand are greatly accelerated.  For us marketing analysts the fun starts with determining the value of traditional media in context of the results in the social community.

If you have any comments just let me know.  I would love to get your feedback.

Is the Influencer Model dead?

Professor Duncan Watts (Columbia University, Sociology) stirred up a hornets nest reportedly debunking the concept that buzz isn’t generated by influencers.  In a recent HealthCare VOX article (March 6th, 2007) was the following quote:

“Conventional wisdom holds that in order to spread buzz you have to target people who are influential in their communities.  Watts disagrees, saying that “most of the time buzz is spread by networks ‘and a critical mass of easily influenced people each of whom adopts, say, a look or brand after being exposed to a single adopting neighbor.’"”

Of course to get press you have to be just a little bit sensational and to claim that influencers aren’t influential will certainly stir up the pot, especially amongst the influencers.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association has now just gotten into the argument by calling for papers either for or against either side.  It will be interesting to see how this sorts itself out.  Certainly, people do listen to influencers.  And certainly, networks drive the value of the influencers.  Personally, I think it will probably end up that both are right.

Influencers and Influencees

Influencers are called that because they have some sway over their audiences.  Some people are more easily influenced than others because of their personalities (the influencees).  The network in the middle is important so that influencers can get their message out to other influencers and the influencees in the most economic way possible.

If you have an opinion please let me know.  I would like to hear it.

The Coming Social Networking Community Crunch

How many social networks will your consumers belong to?  Will it be just one?  Two? Ten?  If it’s only one, then late entrants into the social networking community space will be definite losers.  If you think your consumers will be involved in a large number of different communities then what’s to worry?

There are four dimensions to this issue:

Social Networking Community Share of Engagement

Consumers just won’t have the time to spend participating and engaging in a lot of communities.  Similar to share of wallet, communities will be competing for share of engagement.  Since there is only so much time in the day, a consumer is going to only have time to engage in a few communities. 

Social Networking Community Stickiness

Once a consumer begins to participate in a community and receive value from it he/she will be invested in it.  As this investment grows it will be more difficult for the consumer to want to invest in other communities.  The community is sticky.

Influencer Reputation and Social Networking Communities

This phenomenon applies to consumers but more so to influencers.  Influencers stake their reputations on being a perceived ‘expert’.  Once they have begun recommending one community over another, they won’t be able to recommend another community because that would impinge on their expert status.

Consumer Behavior and Social Networking Community Engagement

At any one time a consumer will have a limited set of hobbies and interests.  These could be sports (e.g. football, golf or NASCAR), politics or a hobby (e.g. cake decorating, cooking scrapbooking).  As with any consumer the more they diversify their offline interests the less time they will have to engage on line.  Their community engagement will be driven by their desire to align their online activities with their hobbies and lifestyles.

In the future I believe this will evolve.  As communities deliver more and more value, consumers will find themselves engaging in multiple (a handful) communities because they will find different types of value from one to the next. This increased value will drive increased community engagement and the time engaged in communities will be sliced away from other non-community activities.

Being first to market with new innovation is often linked to success.  Being first to market with a social networking community follows along the same lines.

I also believe that launching a community into the marketplace needs to be done like launching a new product.  It can be a major extension of the brand.  If launched successfully the community can deliver value both in terms of increased level of engagement within the community and in value back to the brand.  If done wrong then the community will fail and possibly have negative consequences for the brand.

I look forward to your comments.  Please let me know what you think.

Social Networks. Are they the brand or do they just support the brand?

There are a few types of social networks.  Those that support a brand and those that are the brand.

MySpace (www.MySpace.com) and YouTube (www.YouTube.com) are examples of social networking sites that consumers visit to consume the brand.

Brand supporting sites are those, such as, www.nikeplus.com or www.dove.com.  These sites providevalue and add value to the brand, but aren’t the primary purpose of the brand.  The Nike brand purpose to to provide footwear and sports apparel.  The Dove brand provides personal care products.  Neither of these have a primary purpose of providing a social network. 

Do you know of any other types of sites?  I’d love to hear from you.  Please let me know.

Monetizing the social networking conversation

Social networks are great.  Selling products and services are better.  But how do we monetize the actions and value of our social networking community?

Marketers must always keep the end in mind and that is to increase the value of the company through increased revenue and increased opportunities for revenue in the future, i.e., improved marketing effectiveness. 

This is also true for social networks.  The purpose of building a social networking community is to create value for the company.  Value is created in six ways:

1. Brand engagement – being engaged in a social network that supports the brand leads to further engagement by the network member with the brand
2. Site popularity – Social networks often follow a herd mentality.  The more popular they are the more value members obtain and the more non-members will gain value from the site
3. Time on site – the more time a member spends with a site, the more engaged that member is with the site and the brand
4. Increase positive WOM – Increased positive WOM typically leads to increased purchase and consumption of the brand
5. Reducing negative WOM – a reduction in negative WOM typically leads to increased purchase and consumption of the brand
6. Direct monetization – This can occur through additional ad clicks or purchase conversions.

If you’d like more information on this feel free to download my whitepaper on Social Networking Strategy Metrics Framework.  More importantly I would love your feedback on the concept.

Measuring the marketing effectiveness of a social networking community

I was recently asked to come up with a marketing metrics framework for measuring the engagement level and marketing effectiveness of a social networking community.  McKinsey & Company developed a multi-tier purchase funnel concept illustrating how consumers move from awareness to purchase:

• Brand Awareness
• Brand Consideration
• Brand Preference
• Purchase Intent
• Purchase

In a similar way activities taking place in a social network indicate varying levels of social engagement within the site.  These are:

• Awareness – Site awareness, through advertising, improved search rankings, forwards to non-members information from the site
• Subscription – Registration or membership
• Consumption – Reading, viewing of photos or videos
• Conversation – Commenting or tagging
• Invitation – Inviting others to join

If you’d like more information on this feel free to download my whitepaper on Social Networking Strategy Metrics Framework.  More importantly I would love your feedback on the concept.