New Study Confirms That a Shift to Social Media and Content Simply Means a Shift in Focus.

 

Need fuel to get the green light on a social media or content marketing project you've been pitching? Or maybe you're looking for backup in your plea to increase your customer retention budget. A new marketing survey conducted by King Fish Media, in partnership with HubSpot, Junta42 and Upshot Institute, might be exactly what you're looking for. (You can skip the overview and download the complete study here.)

The 2009 Survey on Marketing, Media and Measurement offers hard data that confirms our collective hunch that companies are focusing on communicating directly with existing and prospective consumers with methods made ubiquitous by the social media and content craze. At the same time, it shows that traditional advertising is alive and well...but that its usefulness is limited to certain initiatives. And if you're wondering how to gauge "usefulness" in the first place, well, the study's got an entire section on metrics and how they're being used by marketers to make important budgeting decisions.

As recently as a year ago, companies were diving into social media and content not always because they wanted to or believed it was effective, but because they thought they were supposed to. According to this study, however, nearly two-thirds of marketers-in-house and agency-believe that content from a brand or company is perceived as having the same or more value than content from a media brand. Also, they're moving dollars toward direct-touch platforms such as company Web sites and social media.

But traditional advertising does still have a part in the overall marketing mix; the difference now is that it, just like any other marketing platform, has been assigned a specific purpose(s). For instance, advertising is seen primarily as a tool for reaching prospects, but is used far less to talk to customers. Custom content and media are used by over 70% of marketers to communicate with current customers, and 70% use custom media to attract prospects. Social media is used heavily for both.

 Among the key findings of the 2009 Survey on Marketing, Media and Measurement:

• 44% of respondents' are increasing their customer retention budget over the next 12 months.
• 50% of people can't get funding for a marketing project if it doesn't have metrics built into it.
• 86% of respondents' companies are currently creating or plan to create original content for their customers and prospects in the coming year.
• 81% believe that brands and companies can create content that is as engaging and informative as content created by media companies.
• 74% feel that original content and media are most effective for generating marketing ROI.
• 70% are spending more today to reach customers and prospects directly with branded content than they did three years ago.

About the survey: The survey was created by King Fish Media and hosted online from June 15, 2009 to August 25, 2009. King Fish Media and its three co-sponsors-Hubspot, Junta42 and the Upshot Institute-attracted participants through a number of different media, including newsletter blasts, multiple blog posts, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and personal email invitations. The survey was completed by 230 respondents primarily split between corporate management and marketing/sales management.

To download the complete study, please visit: www.kingfishmedia.com/2009research/index.php

Live from OMS: Is Your Company Social?

Posted from the Online Marketing Summit for the Online Marketing for Marketers blog.

Is your company ignoring social media? Michael Weisfeld, Sr. Social Media Strategist at BusinessOnLine, wants to know. But instead of criticizing you, he's going to educate you. Here's some social media knowledge...

To start, 93% of Americans expect companies to have a social media presence. Companies that don't might be resistant to change, others might not understand what social media's all about. And there are likely many other reasons companies haven't yet got involved, but the bottom line is that social media is simply a new way of meeting the same marketing objectives (brand awareness, communication with customers, etc.)

The several lists to follow will give you insight into what variables you need to consider when starting or managing a social media program...

To determine your current social media state:

• Review your business goals and objectives
• Understand your target audiences (conduct a survey, determine what they're talking about, identify influential online individuals, pinpoint commonly-used keywords and topics)
• Conduct a competitive assessment to determine how your company stacks up in terms of brand awareness & reputation, and identify gaps or opportunites
• Analyze trends and patterns in participation, consumption, adoption, seasonality, critical mass, etc.
• Identify topics to talk about. Look for potential content in customer service logs, FAQs, recommendations, success stories, and other internal information that comes straight from the consumer.

Make Data-Driven Decisions that will help you determine the direction of your social media program by:

• Using key findings to develop your social media tactics
• Differentiating between a campaign and a program--the success of a social media program will rely on your efforts to humanize the approach, which is a long term strategy, not a finite project like most marketing campaigns

Process for getting started: Is your company ready?

• Does your company have the man power? Remember that not anyone can become an influential blogger, and that social media is time consuming
• Define your social media team, including an executive program champion, internal community manager, and team of content contributors and community moderators

Traits to look for in your social media team members:

• Ability to empathize with others
• Strong organizational skills
• Ability to hold a conversation
• Analytical and critical thinking
• Develop the potential in others
• Manage online detractors in a tactful way
• Desire to meet new people
• Easy to talk to and form a connection with

Building a social media playbook--The Elements:

• Know your strategy and objectives
• Have a social media vision
• Determine theme/messaging in advance
• Determine brand guidelines
• Produce creative elements
• Establish participation policies and protocols
• Map your content
• Choose the best technology/platform

Determine costs--variables that contribute to social media program costs:

• Technology and custom development
• Bandwidth and infrastructure
• Team training
• Continuous program management and maintenance
• Participation and moderation
• Content enhancement
• Social media platform fees

What are the key elements of a good social media program?

• Creators: Content produceers
• Critics: Commnt on a blog/forum
• Collectors
• Joiners
• Spectators: People who listen but don't participate
• Inactives: none of the above

What are the phases of a social media program?

• Phase One: Active Listening. The opportunity for you to assess what's going on and get the "lay of the land."
• Phase Two: Participation. ONce you have a sense of what's going on, you can decide where you want to get involved
• Phase Three: Energize & Motivate. Ignite the social media atmosphere with your company.

What constitutes success? It must be measurable to measure ROI. And it is:

• Quantitative data: number of page views, responses/comments, content downloaded/embedded, number of shares, RSS feed subscriptions, and many, many more.
• Qualitative measurements such as corporate reputation, negative/positive relationships ratio, customer retention, etc...
• Social media efforts can be held to familiar KPIs: Frequency, reach and impact.

Is there business value? Yes, in a big way:

• Especially in this economy: "Dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media campaigns look like the pretty girl at the bar."
• Only 14% of people trust ads, whereas 32% trust bloggers' opinions on products and services
• Use social media to get a direct connection with your audience and make company-wide improvements based on this dialogue
• A singly effort can multiply greatly
• Remember that whole Obama social media campaign? Umm, yeah.

And speaking of Obama, what did we learn in 2008?

• It's not enough to just throw up a web page and call it an online platform
• You have to participate in relevant and active communities
• There's not one "right" platform
• You should integrate across platforms to connect and cross promote
• Understand there are different types of internet users
• Measure metrics like frequency, reach, and satisfaction

Other notes:

• Social networks allow members to share the elements of your program to other locations, i.e. they're very efficient word-of-mouth marketing engines.
• Make sure there's an appropriate call to action. "Hey, don't forget to sign up for our webinar next month."
• Integrate several social media platforms. An effective campaign defines the interaction between platforms.

The end. Time for drinks!

Live from OMS: How to Plan for, Create and Publish Online Content for Maximum ROI...

Posted live from the Online Marketing Summit for the Online Marketing for Marketers Blog.

Joe Pulizzi is the founder of Junta42.com and co-author of Get Content. Get Customers. Kristina Halvorson is the Founder and President of Brain Traffic. They met on Twitter when Kristina (@halvorson) tweeted "So, what's the big deal about content?" And Joe (@juntajoe) quickly came to her rescue. Now, they've come together to talk about content and why it's such a big deal.

Joe looks at marketing through the eyes of a publisher. His focus is the creation of good content, which he believes transcends the actual platform: the platform's secondary to the content. You need good content on EVERY platform. And marketers need to become publishers in order to be effective... Marketers need to create content that doesn't have an ounce of sales material in it. Repeat: stop talking about yourself; no one's listening and no one cares. In the same space you can provide educational and engaging content that meets your readers' (i.e. your prospect's) needs. Seriously, take off your sales and marketing hats and think like a publisher.

A publisher's only concern is giving the readers what they want. That's what you need to concern yourself with as well as a marketer. What does this mean for the publishers out there? A lot! You've got all the resources to create new revenue streams. (And I think it's safe to interject here that the old models are falling by the wayside, so hop to it.)

So, why does content matter?

• It tells your story
• It answers people's questions
• It inspires and entertains
• It motivates
• It drives decision-making
• It manages expectations
• It brings your brand to life
• It builds-or breaks-trust

A few things to note about traditional media content:

• The content is always about what the reader needs or wants, not about the company itself
• This is where most marketers go wrong - they want to talk about their needs/their products/their services
• But is should be all about your customer

Kristina is here to tell us about why content is so hard for marketers to get a handle on. (Sorry for ending my sentence with a preposition, all you grammar cops out there). First off, not enough attention is being paid to creating and overseeing the content, itself, which involves:

• Sourcing
• Copywriting
• Editing
• Proofreading

(This doesn't even scrape the surface in terms of other forms of content such as video, etc.) And once people realize that they do need content, they put it down at the bottom in terms of importance. More weight is typically placed on templates, testing, interface design, information architecture and user experience. And while all of this is important, it's nothing without content. Problems you'll encounter when implementing a content strategy:

• No one has time
• No one wants to deal with the complexities
• The writer is overwhelmed by requirements, scope, gaps and so on.
• The people who didn't care too much about the project at first come out of the woodwork with new demands (sound familiar?)
• The people in charge of creating the website don't have the tools to help you get your arms around the content.
• No one has time to think about what happens to the content after it launches...which means the content quality has no oversight...which puts you right back at square one.

And there goes your schedule/budget/outcome... So we've identified the problem; what's the solution? Start with a content strategy. Great! But what's that?

• It's the process of planning for the creation of useful, usable content.
• Not just WHAT you're going to publish and WHERE, but WHY.
• Content strategy isn't just deciding what you're going to include; it's deciding what you're going to leave out.
• It can act as a benchmark for all content-related decisions
• It offers real world context and drives data integration
• It facilitates discussion between (and sign-off from) key stakeholders
• Engages conent providers and reviewres early in the web project process
• Identifies key themes and messages for web writers to use
• Informs site information architecture
• Drives metadata creation and assignment

Map content to real objectives and goals:

• Your company's key offerings
• Website priorities
• Business objectives
• User goals

Content Audit:

• Possibly the most important thing you can do to avoid scope creep and minimize risk
• Catalog web pages, print materials, all communications
• Conduct a gap analysis

--> Don't commit to content you can't create or maintain Content specifications and creation

• Get real world content specifications as early as possible
• Identify who is responsible for providing, reviewing, and approving the content before writing begins
• Train or hire web writers...it's a very, very different process and medium from print. You can't just hire a regular copywriter. And all you copywriters, you should be learning to write for the web!
• Keep the content audit up-to-date to eliminate redundant workflows among various communicators

--> Ensure quality and quantity control, informed by clear recommendations and overseen by dedicated resources.

The End.

Live from OMS: Maximize Conversions and Revenue

Posted live from the Online Marketing Summit at the Online Marketing for Marketers blog

Now I'm in the Advanced session, which is [not surprisingly] full considering today's audience of savvy marketers.

Olivier Chaine, CEO of Magnify360 is waxing poetic about the money pit that websites can be; why Google is often a big waste of money that's used by misinformed marketers (particularly if its their only strategy); and why people continue to pump money into their websites without increasing conversion rates.

Here are some highlights...

• 97.7 percent of people coming to your site are not satisfied. This is not your site, per se, this is an industry-wide problem.
• Call-to-actions: Take Sprint's site. What does someone who wants to buy a cellphone see? Olivier notes, "Wow, what a beautiful two-minute flash movie you have here. That's nice and all, but what do I do if I just want to buy a cellphone? There needs to be a 'buy' call-to-action."
• Conversion: He's now showing a cookie site (don't know what brand). Olivier points out that its strategy is based around making people hungry, but notes that catering to a consumer's present hunger on a website is the wrong approach. (Seems obvious, right?) The consumer knows it's going to be four or five days for delivery, so that's not how you're going to convert them into a customer. The company should showcase satisfied customers who boast the ease of working with the company or other qualities that are more likely to appeal to the end user. Remember: websites are different from physical stores.
• Showcase products against user personality, intent, and usabilty. For instance, if you're offering a deal, do the math for the consumer. For instance, instead of "20% off," do what Amazon does: "Was $27.99; now $23.99; You save $4.00." Also, don't force people to fill out unnecessary informaiton on forms. Do you really need the visitor's fax number and street address? Really? Finally, don't confuse the consumer with a bunch of unrelated call-to-actions that don't cater to getting the intended behavior. Google has one box on their site; no wonder they're so successful. Capiche?
• Keyword-based headlines. Want a free 17% lift in traffic? Get your keywords in your headline.
• Segment, segment, segment! Do not attempt one-size fits all optimization (or one-size fits all anything for that matter). Instead of putting 15 bullets on one page in order to cover all the bases, segment your bullets into different pages based on the different audiences you're trying to reach. Fill those pages with your keywords, develop link strategies so that certain keyword searches lead visitors to the page that will best help them...and quickly.
• Ah, good old personality disorders and how they affect testing and strategy. Basically, we're all more than just "clicks," and therefore traditional testing methodologies don't work. People all have different stressors; we think differently, talk differently and have different experiences. Some people are competitive, methodical, insecure, neurotic, etc. These people are all having different experiences even if they're doing the same thing on your site.
• Then there's demographics: if you were to open shops in NYC and San Diego, they'd have to be completely different. Same thing with websites. This goes back to segmenting your audiences and speaking directly to the needs of each one. And not just speaking to them differenty; addressing each of their different needs.
• Some characteristics are more important than others: Knowing whether someone's tactile, for instance, is often more important than knowing whether they're a boy or a girl, or where they live. This stems back to direct mail methods and figuring out exactly how people will physically interact with your site.
• Developing Personas: This is ultimately what this is all about. Before you segment your audience, you have to figure out the different personas it's composed of. Are they looking for a discount? Are they looking for fun? Are they looking for...? How do they buy? Are they impulsive? Do they have to talk to their boss?
• And don't forget browser types. Do I even have to elaborate here? Remember that visitors' experiences are often different depending on their browser.

Imagine the consumer walked into your store and said, "Hi, I'm Olivier." Would you throw your catalogue and tell them to let you know when they're ready? Nope. You'd ask them questions about what kind of lawnmower they're buying, what their needs are, how they'll be using it, etc. So, why would your website be any different?

A lot of marketers come from traditional sales and are used to a certain type of interaction with customers. Sales methods are shifting right along with marketing, though. Whereas once you just had to make the sale and then let the experts deal with the experience, now sales people are required to be the experts as well. Traditional sales and marketing have been abandoned in favor of offering an experience and knowing more than the next guy about everything the consumer needs and how they need it.

Bottom line: Talk in terms your customer will respond to.