Over the past month, I’ve noticed an overarching trend: social media has become a necessary part of a brand’s strategy for communicating with customers - and retaining them.
Marketers who view social media as something in which they must be actively engaged (vs passively creating a presence) will become the winners. This involves understanding what makes your customers tick, while also creating brand loyalty and advocacy. On any given day, according to Zappos.com, 75% of orders are comprised of returning customers. What Zappos does – as ALL brands should – is to listen and engage.
So is creating a Facebook Page or a Twitter account enough? Empirical data shows that businesses must not only create a social media presence, but actively engage their followers. Brian Solis, one of the foremost social media experts, concludes that brands that actively engage with their prospects and customers will increase brand awareness.
Think about it. There are approximately 450 million Facebook users and 100 million registered Twitter users. A Chadwick Martin Bailey study shows that 50% of the Facebook and Twitter users who are actively engaged with a brand are more likely to refer them to people they trust.
The possibilities are endless. For large brands interested in shortening the sales cycle, retaining customers and prodding those current customers to refer to new ones, it is time to think proactively. The reactive approach to social media marketing is seeing your customers jump ship and become brand loyal to your competition because you you did not view social media as a novel way of speaking directly to your customer base. Social media should be placed in the same category of importance as, say, e-mail or search.
Retention has become the new acquisition. It’s been shown that a brand’s Facebook and Twitter followers will be more inclined to buy from a brand that’s engaged with their customers. Solis contends that an astounding 60% of both Facebook and Twitter users said they’d buy and refer.
I have begun to use social media, specifically to research travel and hospitality. When it comes to finding the best flight deal or place to dine, I’ve instinctively gone to Twitter or Yelp to see what certain brands are saying to the populace and what other social media users are saying about these brands in particular. I also check to see how these brands are incorporating user sentiment in what they are pushing out on these channels.
After I recently dined at a restaurant here in New York City and checked in on Foursquare, the restaurant started to follow me on Twitter and Foursquare. Smart? Maybe. Clearly, the restaurant is hoping that their digital face leads to engagement which leads to larger awareness - and more visits to their restaurant. Businesses retaining their customers will be handsomely rewarded. Chadwick Martin Bailey also showed that 80% of Twitter followers of a brand will be more likely to refer that brand compared to if they did not follow them. I’m eagerly anticipating some incentive from this restaurant as a way to not only entice me and keep them top of mind, but to instinctively refer the people I trust.
There is plenty of data available to marketers today. Some even believe there is too much. The variety of ways consumers interact with brands and companies has created a world filled with endless data and the management of that data.
While it is one thing to aggregate data across multiple channels, it is entirely different to do anything with it. Modeling data from traditional sources such as offline/online transaction history, website analytics and email analytics is a time consuming process that requires effort and patience. In our never-ending quest as marketers to better understand customers from a transactional and behavior standpoint, we often look past incorporating additional social data elements that can help us understand the influence level of a potential or current customer.
Social media has created an incredible and unique opportunity for marketers to gain additional insight into their customers’ behaviors. This new opportunity is the measurement of one’s influence. Today we have the ability to append social data to a customer profile with details such as:
Number of Followers on Twitter
Number of Facebook Friends
Inbound links to Blog/Blog Site Traffic
Each of these data elements can be used to create an “influence score” which can be modeled using any specific set of weighting and scoring that makes the most sense to your brand.
For example, if you know Twitter is your best performing channel, Twitter followers can weigh more heavily in your scoring model.
Why leverage social data?
It’s no secret that more and more people are spending their time on social networking sites: Facebook this past April had a staggering 570 billion page views, according to Google. This new reality has serious implications to your business. Here are three reasons why you need to collect standardize and leverage social data:
1. Customer Service: I think we all remember Kevin Smith’s squabble with Southwest Airlines via Twitter. Place his situation in the context of a call center. I call up Acme & Co to complain that my widget is a lemon because I opened the box and the darn thing never turned on. Now this could go one of two ways:
Scenario 1: The customer service rep asks for my name and information, then looks me up in their CRM tool and finds that I am an “Average” customer (in terms of my level of spend). The rep then tell me that they can’t do anything and I must have broken it during setup. Little does this rep know I have 20,000 Twitter followers and I am considered to be a “widget” expert in the social community. I then take this customer service experience and proceed to wreak havoc within my sphere of influence, doing considerable damage to Acme & Co’s brand reputation.
Scenario 2: The customer service rep asks for my name and information, then looks me up in their CRM tTool and is immediately alerted of my “influence score.” Accordingly, they go above and beyond to fix the issue for me. Furthermore, rather than me setting off in a firestorm of negative PR, I post to my sphere of influence about how helpful Acme & Co is, and I actually help them drive incremental sales.
This is the world we live in… VIP tables, comps for high rollers and discounts for family and friends. Money and influence get you more, simple as that. It’s time we applied this same mentality to social influencers as they continue to have a greater impact on your bottom line.
2. Consumer Marketing: Just as highly influential customers need to be treated differently by customer service representatives, they also need to be marketed to differently. By increasing exposure to your brand and having a profound impact on your customer acquisition success, customers that are highly influential become our best marketing tools. If you understand the level of influence of your customers, you can then create specific communications and marketing strategies to make that influence work to your benefit.
3. Customer Value: We often focus on the value of a customer based primarily on transactional purchase data. Then we model that data to determine values such as:
Lifetime value of a customer
Value of an email address
Value of a unique visitor to your site
While these values are still relevant, it is becoming increasingly important to factor social influence data into these calculations. It might be far more valuable to your organization to acquire a single subscriber who has 15,000 monthly blog readers, compared to acquiring 100 new email subscribers.
Under the old model of customer value, the 100 new email subscribers would be seen as more valuable. However, in the real world, the blogger with 15,000 readers has far better odds of helping boost your sales if treated well.
As the world becomes increasingly social, these data elements will become a crucial part of your marketing/CRM strategy and success. The good news is that the data is out there! You can work with third-party data providers to plug this data into your customer profiles. Knowledge is power…and in this case what you do not know might just end up haunting you in the future.
It’s time to alter our current perceptions on what data is truly valuable and actionable. Questions? Shoot me an e-mail at skrauss@zetainteractive.com or find me on Twitter @scottkrauss.
I’ve come across a variety of news outlets who are reporting on how hospitality outfits are leveraging social media to engage and respond to guests’ customer service inquiries or complaints, but some brands are leveraging social media to offer helpful hints on how to make their stay that much better.
Some hotels have stepped beyond using social media simply as a customer service medium. The Wynn Las Vegas, for example, has a strategy to greet guests who check-in via Foursquare and they also plant tips on how guests can have a superior experience.
I had the fortune of sitting down with Zeta Interactive’s own VP of E-Mail Marketing, George DiGuido, who shed some light on the confluence of e-mail marketing and social media, specifically in the hospitality vertical. Social media can heighten a brand’s awareness of what is most relevant to specific guests, inevitably crafting better, targeted content.
“Social monitoring can help drive larger, bulk style email campaigns.,” DiGuido said. “A perfect example is using [Zeta]Buzz to determine how people are talking about your brand and start to draft communication that uses that buzz as a backbone to how the content is generated and the overall tone of the piece.
It can also help establish and set what is relevant to the user… it is the summer season… people are all jazzed about getting out and hitting the pool… email campaigns should pick up on this and message with content that supports the trends.”
Within direct marketing, relevancy is incredibly important. One way to achieve relevancy is to closely monitor the channels which customers are using to communicate with one another.
Social media is the ideal forum to tap into, not to just to see how a customer feels toward your brand, but also to see who is recommending your brand and to whom they are recommending.
DiGuido added, “The thing about hospitality and hotels in specific is that people are more inclined to share their experiences with these types of businesses. People are always looking for the best place to stay… recommendations from peers… and more importantly recommendations from people that they trust. From this perspective the best offense from a hotel/resort is to stay connected where their customers are communicating. It makes social media monitoring extremely important.”
Ignorance is not bliss. Customers are continually inundated with information on where to spend their vacation time and dollars from. The brands that toe the line between 1:1 communication, which is akin to having two ears and one mouth,” will be highly successful. The brands that listen, but respond with irrelevant, annoying messaging will miss out and see their customers jump ship. It’s time for them to adjust their listening aid.
Facebook announced a series of changes last week at the third F8 conference in an apparent attempt to make the web more social.The Facebook experience now exists beyond their platform on external websites that choose to implement their newly released Social Plugins. The key theme throughout the conference regarded the new “Open Graph,” which links objects (e.g., people, photos, events, and fan pages) and connections (e.g., friend relationships, shared content, and photo tags). Marketers need to assess whether there is value in implementing these changes on their website or if sticking with their Facebook page will suffice.Either way, this is a grand opportunity for corporate websites to serve as a hub for their brand’s social experience.
The following developments will change the way users interact with Facebook and how, subsequently, marketers should interact with users:
1.The Fan Naming Convention Has Changed
Trading “fan” Advocacy for a Wider, Less Active Base of “Likers”:Consumers are more prone to “Like” a page/message than “Become a Fan,” as “Liking” may be seen as less of a commitment and personal statement. An increase in followers is expected for pages, but it is possible users will “unlike” a page once they realize the “Like” action mirrors “Becoming a Fan.” As a result, unsubscribe rates may increase following the initial switch.
Engagement is More Important than Ever: To keep “Likers” active, brands will need to continuously disseminate relevant content and deliver on any promises made.
2.Any Website Can Become Part of Facebook
Deeper Insights to Make Digital Marketing Decisions: The introduction of a Universal “Like” Button for websites allows Facebook to keep track of users outside of their platform, gathering more data on user preferences. This data may be shared with marketers to develop more efficient marketing plans, such as optimizing display media ads.
3.Introducing Social Meta Data
Manage How Your Brand is Listed on Individual Profiles:When a user selects the “like” button on a website, not only is a post sent to that user’s news feed, but that website will also be listed under the user’s “interests and likes” in their personal profile.This level of control can be accomplished by placing seven different variables into the meta data on the page where the “like” button resides.These variables call out where and how that page should be represented on a profile.As outlined by Facebook, the data will resemble the following:
The meta data should be implemented at the same time as the Like button.It is suggested to look at all of the attributes that can be incorporated in additional to the required ones above.
4.Mapping Connections through the “Open Graph”
Building Connections with Users On and Off Facebook:Facebook pages have allowed companies to build a network of connections with their brand advocates.The “Open Graph” aims to tie together the relationships between multiple pages, finding how, where, and through which people these pages connect.By adding Social Plugins, a website can take ownership of its segment in the graph.
Open API Makes for a Happier Developer:Among these changes, the most controversial regards the API functionality of Facebook’s “Open Graph.” Any user information that resides on the graph is accessible to the public.For example, to obtain information from a user’s “likes,” one may simply use the following URL structure to retrieve it: https://graph.facebook.com/ID/CONNECTION_TYP.
For a list of companies currently implementing these changes, please visit the following page: http://developers.facebook.com/showcase/. Social Media Marketing needs to become a more prominent component of every company’s marketing mix before more advancements such as these are realeased and companies are left dark within this “open graph.”
Additional information on this subject is available on Facebook:
With Halloween fast approaching this coming Saturday, along with it comes the usual wave of last-minute costumers eager to make a cleaver, funny or scary splash on the 31st. “Halloween” is consistently trending on Twitter, and there is an exponential jump in Halloween-related searches, so now is the time for savvy marketers to pull something out of their bags of tricks.
Zeta Marketing Solutions for the Halloween holiday
Top seasonal retailers HalloweenMart and Spirit Halloween have a web-based retail environment in dire need of a refresh.
HalloweenMart suffers from a bland layout, with no notable call-to-action, compounded with oversized images that further distract from the product listings.
Spirit is at the opposite end of the spectrum, having an overwhelming number of category listings, field entries and a harsh color scheme.
Create a revamped website based entirely on a dynamic usability study, whilst conforming to their established brand identity and product lines.
To drive additional traffic, the retailers should create some branded content for distribution directly to customers
A photo-editing suite that “Creeps-out” a portrait you upload, inserting some Halloween-themed images (smoke, bats, pumpkins, etc.) on top of your picture
While costume retailers seem to be fairly active on twitter (smart move) the other important aspect of Halloween (Candy) has gone unrepresented.
Hershey’s, arguably the largest candy brand worldwide, has no active twitter presence. While they do have a corporate profile, there have been no updates at all.
Mars also has failed to create a Twitter profile.
Both brands should take obvious first steps (Create optimized twitter profiles, update constantly, and link to profile on website homepage, etc.)
Tweets should highlight seasonal recipes created solely with their products.
Costumeideazone.com; the first site that appears in organic search results on Google under “Halloween Costume Ideas” should make better usage of their company Twitter account to build brand awareness and drive traffic to their site.
Currently the account has only 13 Tweets and 14 followers
To foster fans’ creativity; Costumeideazone.com should host a Twitter based contest where users submit their most unique, original and creative ideas with the winning costume being furnished by costumezone.com or a partner
The contest will be cross-promoted on the costumeideazone.com where users can submit their entries and ultimately vote on the winning idea
Costumeideazone.com should offer weekly newsletters via email marketing throughout the month of October in anticipation of their highest traffic month
Capture visitor’s email addresses by partnering with a site that actually sells costumes such as halloweenexpress.com to offer discounts and specials
Organizations nationwide, both for-profit and non-profit, have taken it upon themselves to infuse Breast Cancer Awareness into their product and service lines. With companies as traditionally feminine as Estée Lauder and traditionally masculine companies like the NFL all showing their support behind the cause, this creates a unique opportunity for active companies to not just gain some good PR, but to turn increased attention into mutually beneficial arrangements with worthy charities.
Zeta Marketing Solution for Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Companies whose target market is usually male-dominated should utilize this opportunity to target the female audience by developing charitable incentives.
Gamestop could donate 10% of all orders $100 or more to the NBCAM.
Promote this through their existing social media channels (@gamestopcorp), showing daily examples of what you could get for the required $100
Online retailers such as Zappos and Amazon should prominently feature breast cancer awareness products (pink colored) on landing pages and prior to checkout.
Low-cost items such as ribbons, magnets and stationary should be pushed during checkout, as customers will be more likely to purchase these along with larger orders than by themselves.
Offer free shipping on all pink items as further incentive for charitable contributions
NBACM should develop a series of social media-applicable downloads and skins for promoting the cause.
Similar to green overlay developed in support of the recent Iran protest, a series of adaptable pink icons and backgrounds should be distributed so individuals can become actively involved with little cost.
Last week, MediaPost had an interesting piece on how the “It’s not my job” mentality of many agency search specialists is causing wide-ranging client dissatisfaction. They backed up their assertion with some fairly meaty survey data, which helped drive home the point with empirical evidence from the client pool.
As I read through Forrester’s recent Wave Report on listening platforms and think through some of the innovative conversations we’ve been having with clients and colleagues, a simple thought has begun to manifest itself.
It recently occurred to me that just as Google made the inbound link (and anchor text) a valuable commodity - hence the rise of the paid link - Twitter has now made the retweet (a.k.a. “RT”) a valuable commodity as well.
Some folks are apparently unclear on the concept of basic algabraic logic (you can’t compare apples to oranges) especially as it relates to comparisons between social media and email. Maybe this little short will help out.
