December 10, 2008

Marketing on a Tight Budget - Social Networking to the Rescue?

most talked about brands - 2008

(cc) Most talked about brands - 2008 by Will Lion.


Here are some quick notes from "Why social media is your best marketing strategy in a recession" with Josh Bernoff from Forrester. The webcast was sponsored by Awareness social media marketing.

Slides and Recording Available on Thursday December 11, 2008

Why I Attended

I was particularly interested in this talk because I hoped to gain some insights into measuring ROI for social networking, an area that I've been writing about and looking at.

Great Take Aways

Josh Bernoff, from Forrester, had some great ideas. First he pointed out that marketers need to view social media as asset that grows over time, not just a campaign.

In the Q&A, it was pointed out that some award winners used social media for effective campaign based efforts so it can work both ways. Interestingly some of the campaigns, were continued and became ongoing. It partly depends on your purpose I think which will work.

Josh also pointed out that the effectiveness of social networking tools, especially communities, increases over time and the cost decreases. An example of falling costs is Dell's support forum that started with 30 moderators and then over time experts volunteered to be a monitor so they just have 5 staff moderators. It's interesting to think of virtual communities based around bulletin boards and forums as "social media" -- they are and in many ways they were the first major social networks but they were here long before the terms social networking and media were coined.

Josh also emphasized that it's important to measure what matters - who refers, who signs up, who buys - not just traffic. They surveyed and found that people are measuring primarily volume of activity not ROI metrics.

One slide (check the presentation which will be posted tomorrow) showed the average cost spent by companies on social networking - ballpark was $45 thousand range for blog and $150,000 for a customer community and less than $150,000 for an open community. The bottom line - social networking is inexpensive compared to other marketing.

What Matters - What Should We Measure

Josh gave some examples of what to measure in terms of things that matter, not just volume of activity.

Facebook
Number of messages passed along

Rating/Reviews
Sales

Communities
Purpose is research, then research value
Referrals - how many new members referred, key to sales in many niches
Avoided support costs
Idea community, value of idea generated

Blogs
Leads
Awareness, press coverage, search rank
(Caveat - Blogs from companies get the lowest form of trust of any activities by a company -- see just released findings on this)

Videos, Podcasts
Tracking back to company with URL

Widgets
Build in tracking

Twitter
Depends on strategy; Dell sells remainder equipment, Comcast - customer satisfaction


Examples of Successful Uses of Social Networking from the Entrants from Groundswell Awards

There were thousands of entrants and you can browse through neat write ups of the winner and others on the site. This is a great place to start for examples of "what works" with social networking if you're just starting out.

1. Young and Free Alberta - Winner (Talking)
- Winner in Talk about it category
- Created by a small community credit union who were targeting new accounts by young people. They held a contest for spokesperson and chose someone named Melissa did a blog and videos and was on Facebook
- She got a lot more young people - 2,000 new accounts, $4 million deposits Canadian

2. Acuvue Australia - Finalist (Talking)
- Raised awareness and sales of their one day contact lenses via a Facebook "Wink" app
- 1 day contact lenses
- 65,000 Winks
- 165,000 winks sent
- 17% sales in increase after this campaign concluded

Xanadu - Finalist (Talking)
- Trying to get a Tony for the Cubby Bernstein
- Did not win the Tony but won the New York Times poll for who should with 56% of the votes

Hershey's Bliss - Winner (Energizing)
-Asked people to hold a house party to introduce chocolates, share photos of the event etc. Invites to the parties were sent online
- 10,000 house parties held
- Parties generated 129,000 invitations
- They reached 7 million people
- Key measurement - they polled people who attended and most had never heard and over 90% after the party and recommend them after the party

EA'a Gamers - Finalist (Energizing)
- Market a skateboarding game. You have the option to record and share your ride
- 3 million visits, spent to 9 minutes per visit
- One video over 900,000 views
- Way to exposed customer created content to others


Natural Instruments Winner -Winner (Supporting)
- Makes instruments of scientists and engineers
- Created Lab View community - "the nerd network"
- 46% questions answered by the other community members


Starbucks - Winner (Embracing)
They created My Starbucks Idea
- 175,000 ideas and 30 that have been implemented
- 500,000 votes registered on the ideas
- Generates positive energy and ideas

Starbucks was prepared to moderate and take down hate and obscenity comments. In this particular community they only had to take down 10 comments. This will vary but it was less than expected.

In the Motherhood Video Site Sponsored by Suave and Sprint
- Videos about the challenges of being a mom - write the script
- People submitted scripts, and they hired professional actors to act them out
- 547 million impressions
- 16.9 million visits
- Suave saw their market share while the promotion was running

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