So you’ve spend a whole bunch of time and money trying to engage consumers in your web 2.0 media channels...now what? Having a presence on these channels is only half of the battle. One oversight brands often make when testing social media waters, is the investment it takes to moderate these channels on a continual basis. The following examines six ways to activate all those people who signed onto your online brand channels.
Two questions.
How many Facebook fans does your company have?
What do you want your Facebook fans to do on behalf of your company?
Way too many people can answer the first question, but not the second. And that’s the biggest weakness of company-based social media at present.
The Friend Bubble
Doing something (buying Google stock, buying houses, buying McRib sandwiches from McDonald’s) just because everyone else is, regardless of the underlying reality, is a condition that we’re clearly prone to here in the U.S. This behavior of course creates artificial bubbles of enthusiasm.
Too often, marketers and their agencies are creating Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and YouTube channels because everybody else is doing it. I certainly support the concept of engaging with your customers online, but to me social media outposts aren’t Web 2.0, they are Toll-Free Help Line 3.0.
And what I don’t see is enough commitment to individual customer interaction and thinking about social media ROI from a bottom line, not a top line perspective.
Instead, it’s like some sort of post-modern Dom DeLuise in Cannonball Run, a madcap dash to get involved in a landscape of shiny digital outposts. And for what?
Your Customers Aren’t Baseball Cards
There’s absolutely no point in collecting friends and followers like a hobbyist with a self-esteem problem. If you’re going to go to the trouble and expense of engaging with your customers in social media, you absolutely must give them mechanisms for supporting your brand. Of course companies will struggle with social media ROI when the strategic plan ends at “we’ll get them to be friends with us on Facebook.”
Here are 6 ways to activate your friends and followers so they don’t just sit there like a menagerie of tiny faces.
1. Expand the relationship with content Provide printable materials (shockingly old school) that your customers can use. Brand stories. Ideas of how to use your company’s products in different or interesting ways. Letters to give to retailers when asking them to carry your product. Graphics they can download and add to their Twitter profile.
Give your customers tools needed to market on your behalf.
2. Tie your outposts together If you have Twitter followers, make sure they know about your Facebook page (and especially any event pages you create). If you have a Facebook page, add YouTube videos and Flickr photos to it. Link your profiles to your blog, not your corporate home page.
Many (most?) companies do not include links to their social media outposts in their employees’ email signature files, in their email newsletter, or even on their Web sites.
Make your social media presences work in concert, not as unrelated efforts.
3.Understand your fans’ other affinities and interact at that level Are you looking at the profiles of your fans/followers to see what they like (other than your company)? You should. Use Facebook insights or software like Unbound Technology (or just some reading and a spreadsheet) and map out the affinities of your fans. If there are clear patterns, create content or messages that are relevant in that area.
If you discover that many of your fans like “The Godfather” post a haiku about “The Godfather” on your Facebook page (including references to your brand, natch) and ask fans to create their own entries.
4. Use Contests Creating a contest within social media doesn’t have to be hard, and it’s a fantastic way to keep your fans and followers engaged. I recommend a contest per month.
Ideally, have them interact with or create content that supports your brand position. Rate a video. Comment on a blog post. Suggest headlines for a print ad. Create a Godfather Haiku.
5. Exclusive Content Zappos.com does a terrific job of delighting their customers by upgrading shipping from standard to overnight on occasion. Smart e-commerce companies always include a sample of a related product in the box. The same principle applies to content. Give your best fans and friends access (via link on Twitter or Facebook or your blog) to sneak peeks at your new Web site. Or new product photography. Or your new TV commercials. Just making them feel like part of the team goes a long way.
6. Research/Survey Other than the occasional Facebook or Twitter poll, there isn’t nearly enough use of social media as a research laboratory. Your best customers are indicating that they appreciate your brand. Periodically, why not invite them to answer a few questions about themselves, suggestions to improve your company, and other ideas? You don’t need a full-blown My.Starbucks.com initiative to encourage customer feedback and insight. Just ask them every once in a while.
Marketers get caught up in industry lingo/trends and forget to account for one critical element in their thinking - the consumer perspective. In other words, we like to talk to ourselves a little. One of those recent industry trends is relationship marketing. Although the thinking behind relationship marketing is on the right track we've got to be realistic about the kinds of relationships consumers want from brands.
Raise your hand if you’ve heard of relationship marketing. Now keep it up if you know what it means.
Lots of hands still up, huh? OK. Fine. You, there. You with the iPhone and the I’m Kind of a Big Deal on Twitter t-shirt. What does relationship marketing mean?
Mmm hmm?
Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. I tuned out at “creating authentic connections” and “establishing many-to-many connections that foster meaningful dialogue.” DING DING DING. You are WRONG, my tweep, my Facebook friend, my FriendFeed flunkie.
Let’s talk about what “relationship marketing” really is, shall we?
According to Wikipedia, and Len Barry who coined the term, “relationship marketing is a form of marketing which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a dominant focus on point-of-sale transactions.”
1. Relationship marketing is not about relationships. It’s about marketing.
As a relationship marketer, I focus on making sure you not only buy my stuff today, but you keep buying it over and over and over. “Relationship” refers to the customer’s purchase history, not some deep interpersonal connection.
We do not take moonlit walks on the beach. We are not friends. We are not acquaintances. As a matter of fact, we couldn’t pick each other out of a police lineup.
As a business, I’ve simply agreed to listen to you — or, more likely, people demographically similar to you — for long enough to know what you might buy. Then I make it and sell it to you.
If this is our relationship, we both need therapy.
2. Relationship marketing is not about authenticity.
I could tell you I’m just an ordinary person who happens to be exactly like you. I could tell you I’m the reincarnation of Cleopatra’s pool boy. I could tell you I’m a one-eared lumberjack.
It doesn’t matter a whit. If I get you signed up for my advance discount list and give you a good enough deal, we both win.
3. Relationship marketing is not about transparency.
Transparency is nice, and sometimes necessary, but it’s not what this is about.
It’s fascinating when Rand Fishkin tells me how much money he made last year, but it doesn’t affect whether or not I keep my SEOMoz membership.
4. Relationship marketing is not about connection.
Just because Steve Jobs doesn’t know your kid’s name doesn’t mean you’re going to buy a Dell next time.
5. Relationship marketing is not about being social.
Social is Sunday morning brunch with your buddies. It’s not Twitter.
And frankly, you’ll have a tough time selling anything in either place.
6. Relationship marketing is not about equality.
The only thing that’s equal about you being my “fan” and me begging you for money is that we’re equally codependent.
7. Relationship marketing is not even about communication.
I buy apples every week and the things don’t even have a label, let alone a communication strategy.
You joining my Facebook fan page is not a relationship.
You following me on Twitter is not a relationship.
You commenting on my blog is not a relationship.
Let’s face it, if your boyfriend treated you as badly as I do, your mother would tell you to break up with him.
Relationship marketing is about marketing.
The touchy feely, Summer of Love, gosh-aren’t-we-great-friends stuff is nice. Sometimes it’s even necessary. But it’s not what relationship marketing is actually about.
Relationship marketing is about getting the customer to stick around long enough to keep shopping. And it’s about making sure that customer comes back next time to buy more stuff.
Don’t fall so in love with the relationship that you forget about the marketing. Like talking about benefits and not just features. Like having a halfway decent market position. Like a real call to action. Like, you know, selling stuff.
All the authentically transparent connections in the world won’t fix those if they’re broken. But stick a Wheaties coupon on the back of every box of Wheaties and you’ve got it nailed.
The marketing model of the 70s and 80s focused on persuading purchase behaviour by speaking to a product's functional benefits. This model has changed as functional attributes are no longer the leading driver to purchase. Successful marketers are now tapping into four dimensions of consumers' lives to influence behaviour and perception. Discover why your category competition is no longer your only threat. Check out the links.
The old branding model is past its "sell by" date. It is a product-centered model that comes from packaged goods in the '70s and '80s; offer differentiated benefits that a particular consumer segment is thought to care about. "My peas are picked at the peak of sweetness"...that kind of thing. This model is breaking down as people try store brands and find they are "fit for purpose" at a better price. Now what?
Change the model.
People live life in four dimensions. We have functional needs, but we also are social creatures, have self-expressive needs, and crave content that we find to be entertaining and informative. Thinking this way reveals new ways of making your brand relevant:
Functional: go from "product feature" to "solution-based" thinking
Social: make your brand a celebrity that is fanned, friended, and followed. Or, create a thematic environment around a value shared by your brand and its customers (e.g. Dove and "the real meaning of beauty")
Self-expressive: the brand must stand for something so clearly understood, it is cultural currency
Content: become the logical and top of mind source for content centered on what your brand is about
But here's the catch; your competitive set will change as you offer new constructs…new ways to categorize. This takes us to the idea of a "mental marketplace" where your brand must vie for attention against other brands that are functionally unrelated. Product brands can even find they compete with celebrities and news publishers.
Noah Brier has created a freely available tool called brand tags. (You should also check out mattermeter.) Brandtags displays a logo and asks you to type the first thing that comes to mind when you see a particular brand's logo. You can then see what that brand means to everyone else.
3M competes with Apple in the mental marketplace of innovation but they express their brands differently. Experience the Apple store in SOHO. Apple has leveraged innovation, cool, and edginess into self-expression, a sense of belonging and maybe a little bit of "theme park" thrown in. Oh by the way, Apple stores reached $1 billion in sales faster than any other chain in history (previous record-holder was the Gap).
Whole Foods vies in the mental marketplace of health/fresh with Dannon, Kashi, and Subway (and others, of course). Whole Foods "competes" via brand community across social media (e.g. 800,000+ Twitter followers), has a wonderful blog and iPhone app about a wellness lifestyle from organic/fresh foods. A Whole Foods shopping bag is almost a clubhouse handshake.
When a brand wins in its mental marketplace it leverages multi-layered connections with people into spontaneous credibility that converts into sales. The unfamiliar new product becomes instantly familiar.
If store brands are going to dominate the mental marketplace for "affordable" where do you plan to play and win?
Twitter has had a polarizing effect. The majority of tweeters try it out once and never come back – orphan tweets as they call them. Others rave about the platform and call it the future. If you are struggling to see the value in Twitter you are not alone. We think the following five strategies shed some light on why companies are spending money on this latest flashy object.
Twitter continues to fascinate. As this general-purpose tool becomes more widespread, lots of ways for business to use it are emerging. Most businesses use some combination of these five archetypal strategies:
1. Promote. This goes without saying and is the easiest way to use Twitter. “Hey, we have a new product coming out! (link)” “Don’t forget to watch our Super Bowl ad (link).” etc. The jury is out as to whether this type of promotion is useful or simply washed away in the mass of Twitter noise–although if you have a strong following, the right product at the right moment, and can get the right people to tweet about you, it’s a beautiful thing. Examples: everybody.
2. Sell. I happened to get into a discussion on Twitter about sleep apnea. Right away a guy chimed in with a couple of questions. When I mentioned that I would love a particular type of product to help my condition, he let me know that such a product existed, how to find out more information on it, and (of course) how to order it. I bought the product pretty soon thereafter, through his referral. If you can identify users for your product by searching for tweets about it, you can find customers. Examples: The Sleep Apnea guy, Dell.
3. Care. If people are having trouble with your product and services, and they tweet about it, you can locate those tweets, intervene and solve the problem. If you’re lucky, the customer will tweet about how well you solved her issue. This strategy surprised me when it emerged–now I am surprised that it is still so rarely practiced. Examples: Comcast, EasyJet.
4. Converse. “User-centered innovation” may be more theory than reality today, but some companies are using Twitter to engage in real dialogues about what products they should feature or how their services should operate. The polling capability of Twitter is excellent for this purpose. Example: Best Buy. [Note: a great use of polling on Twitter is Andrew McAfee's "andyasks" project; here are some #andyasks results.]
5. Expose. Some companies are deciding that they can differentiate by humanizing themselves–and this means becoming more transparent. If people know that people–not just information systems, buildings and capital structures–work there, customers will want to buy from them. Twitter is a great way to open up your company; because it is inherently an individual medium, the personalities of the individuals who tweet come through. Be careful, though: if your tweeters are not representative of your company’s true culture, the disconnect will be apparent. Example: Zappos.
I need your help here. Are there other primary strategies? Are there other good examples for each? Please weigh in by leaving a comment.
The concept of “listening to the conversation”, which is at the core of most social media programs and is the foundation for many companies that sell listening tools, is really just a pseudonym for tracking content your customers create based on their satisfaction, or dissatisfaction. It’s often described as “share of voice” – the percentage of all online content and conversations about your company, compared to your competitors. Get familiar with four keys to increasing your share of voice.
The concept of “listening to the conversation” which is at the core of most social media programs, and is the foundation for many companies that sell listening tools, is really just a pseudonym for tracking content your customers create based on their satisfaction, or dissatisfaction. It’s often described as “share of voice” – the percentage of all online content and conversations about your company, compared to your competitors.
There are four keys to increasing your share of voice.
Out of sight, out of mind
Keeping customers aware of your brand on a continuous basis is a challenge worth tackling. We each interact with hundreds of brands each day, yet how many do you remember? Memorability is enhanced through repetition.
If you want your customers to create content about your brand, they have to remember engaging with your brand, and top-of-mind awareness is heightened through social Web interactions. The more your customers see and interact with you in the venues where they spend time, the more likely they are to remember your brand and create content. That’s why it’s important for brands to have a meaningful presence in large social Web outposts like Facebook and Twitter, and to actually engage with customers, not just create online Yellow Pages ads. Each interaction keeps the brand incrementally more top-of-mind, translating into more content creation opportunities.
Delight and Helpful
The best way to grow share of voice is to delight your customers. Delighted customers create satisfaction-driven content, which reaches other customers and prospective customers of your brand, essentially doing your marketing for you.
But that free marketing can be both a blessing and a curse. Social media is the ultimate b.s. test. If you’re mediocre, the community will figure it out, and fast. How would you like to be the #67 hotel for Indianapolis on Tripadvisor.com?
But don’t think the actual attributes of your product or service have to be great. They don’t. There are plenty of companies active in social media who use their prowess there to overcome deficiencies in their core business (Comcast, for example). In social media, it’s more important to be helpful than good.
Faces, not Logos
People are interesting. Companies typically are not. Thus, people like to talk about people. Perezhilton.com, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, Sportscenter. Whether it’s rooted in envy, admiration, gossip or disdain, we have an innate kinship as a species that I just don’t see among my son’s hermit crabs.
When you’re a kid, you get a lollipop from the doctor if you were a good, complacent boy, and you got the same lollipop if you threw a tantrum, knocked over a table of instruments, and tore the posters off the walls. (which one was me?) While dog trainers, marriage counselors and others might disagree, I support this concept of reward independent of behavior, and you should too.
Other than in an initial audit circumstance, I have a hard time grasping the concept of social media listening without responding. Would you pick up your (800) number and just breath into the phone, listening to customer praise or complaints without saying a word?
If you want to increase your share of voice, recognize people for taking the time to create content about your company, whether that content is satisfaction-driven or dissatisfaction-driven. If somebody uploads a photo of your product on Flickr, track them down and send them a thank you note and a coupon or a T-shirt. And if somebody writes a negative blog post about your company, answer the comment (remember the power of public customer service), try to solve their problem, and send them a thank you and a coupon or T-shirt.
If you treat the negative as good or better as the positive, it’s amazing how much you can innoculate against ongoing dissatisfaction.
Are you tracking share of voice? How are you going to increase it?
Sure some of your ads and attempts at viral are on Youtube but there’s a lot of opportunity in this channel left to be leveraged. Don’t feel bad. Commercial success on YouTube has been elusive to most brands hoping to be embraced by the community. Find out what it takes to be relevant in this media space by taking a cue from some top notch marketing content. As Youtube has grown into the preeminent video sharing service online, marketers have tried, with limited success, to broadcast themselves and to reach audiences with their messaging. And while individuals have used YouTube as a platform to step into the spotlight, most brands have been left behind in the shadows. Save for the occasional media-supported viral video blitz, or user generated contest, commercial success on YouTube has been elusive to the many brands that have tried to reach for that brass ring.
This is not to say that brands will ever reach the heights of popularity on YouTube that individuals have achieved, and it would be naive to start a Sponsored Channel with the expectation that millions of viewers will tune in right away. However, YouTube does represent a great opportunity for marketers to reach consumers who are searching for information about a brand or related products and services. YouTube can also be a powerful direct marketing tool, provided that it is considered as part of the marketing mix rather than a tactic in a vacuum.
One thing is becoming apparent: The brands that achieve long-term success on YouTube are the ones that consistently and frequently publish refreshing content that has intrinsic value for audiences online. Here are some of the standout brands that have created a strong position on YouTube by understanding the zeitgeist of collective content generation and some of the clever marketing tactics they are using to build their presence on the site.
Some brands are missing the boat
YouTube is littered with thousands of “contest-driven” videos and channels that have not been updated in many months, and in some cases, many years. Brands that let their channels lapse and fade away into the wasteland of untidy and untended pages lack a clear understanding of how to use YouTube as a social media vehicle.
I have also specifically excluded some very large brands from this post that have created one or more viral “one-hit wonders” but continue to use their branded YouTube channel to only post their television commercials online. These global brands tend to generate buzz for their one “viral” video but these efforts prove to be largely campaign-centric and media supported. Many of these brands still neglect to publish content on an ongoing basis.
Additionally, I have not included brands on this list that professionally create content as their primary product or service (i.e. newspapers, magazines, TV shows, Internet TV, entertainment companies, music industry, movies).
The fantastic aesthetic of wicked waves and big beautiful swells help make Quiksilver and Roxy’s content hypnotically captivating. Companies that market products with an exciting angle or naturally beautiful aesthetic have an easier time creating content, to be sure, but Quiksilver and Roxy’s webisodes and mini-documentaries go beyond cool surf footage and give consumers inside access to what goes on behind the scenes on the professional surfing, skating and snowboarding tour circuits. The video selection also features vlogs by the pros, lifestyle profiles of up and coming musicians and a potpourri of other content.
The marketers at Quiksilver Inc. are bringing consumers value by offering them a look behind the scenes and giving them access to free content that, in the past, might not have been available at all or would only be available by purchasing surfing or skating DVDs. At the same time they are also extending the value of their sponsored Surf, Skate and Snowboarding event marketing dollars by using these events as opportunities for filming exciting videos.
Quiksilver posts a new video about once a week (Roxy posts slightly more frequently), which helps them both maintain a consistently fresh presence. Eventually, these brands might benefit from producing shorter videos on a more frequent basis. For a relatively niche apparel company, posting almost 200 videos in 2 years is no small achievement and the marketing teams at Quiksilver Inc. deserve recognition for their forward-looking efforts.
2. Ford Models
Channel:youtube.com/user/FordModels Type of videos: Lifestyle/Fashion/How-To YouTube marketing voice: Aspirational fashionista
Let me start out by saying this; it’s really not fair to include Ford Models in this list. They have access to the most beautiful women in the world, are a part of what is perceived as an ultra-glamorous industry and have resources that the average brand marketer can only dream of. Unfair advantage? Sure. But there are plenty of other brands that spend huge dollars on YouTube without realizing a fraction of the results of Ford Models. Even without all the in-house resources, the marketers at Ford Models deserve a hand because they are doing a lot of things right:
1. Publishing multi-lingual content: Broadens their potential audience to include an international contingent. Also, by widening their appeal, they are working the system and increasing their chances of appearing on the lists of “Most Viewed” Channels on YouTube.
2. Offering a wide range of practical infotainment: From vlogs of models traveling to exotic locations, to tips from pro stylists, to behind the scenes videos of photo shoots and fashion shows, the content on the Ford Models YouTube page provide valuable information to their target audience.
3. Patience is a virtue: Since 2006, Ford Models has uploaded over 554 videos. With so many videos produced, Ford Models has learned what works for their brand and what doesn’t. By constantly producing and uploading videos, they have learned to tailor their messaging and have also created a large archive of searchable content that continues to accumulate views.
Online video is a relatively new medium and brands need to understand that their video content, like their websites, will continually be refined and will evolve to the needs and expectations of audiences. The smart tactics employed by Ford Models have led to the slow and steady growth of their large subscriber base but they have invested a significant amount of effort to get to this point. Brands that want instant results should expect to spend a great deal of money on media.
3. University of Phoenix Online
Channel: youtube.com/user/UniversityofPhoenix Type of videos: Webisodes/Testimonial/Mini-documentary YouTube marketing voice: Everyman Inspiration
As broadband has become widely available, the dream of attending college online has come to fruition. Private online education programs have become so popular that even the old guard Ivy League Universities have begun to offer classes or access to lectures online. But when it comes to marketing its online classes via video, University of Phoenix Online leads the charge. On YouTube, University of Phoenix has hundreds of video testimonials, reviews, mini-documentaries and webisodes.
It’s not that their videos have huge numbers of views, or that their channel has that many subscribers (some have only a few hundred views); In this case, building a subscriber base is not important in terms of University of Phoenix Online’s marketing objectives. What is important is that they have at least one video to connect with each prospective student that searches for an online school or visits their channel.
Where University of Phoenix Online’s video marketing excels is in having a large number of videos, which increase the odds that the prospect will find a video featuring a real, relatable student with whom they can identify. Among the most watched videos on the channel are a compelling testimonial by MSNBC Anchor and graduate, Christina Brown, and a mini-documentary series featuring a diverse cast of graduates with inspirational stories about their life experience.
By being the first in their category to create a sponsored channel on YouTube, University of Phoenix Online automatically falls at the top of any search on YouTube for online schools—even if a user searches for a competitor. Using compelling, emotionally charged content, University of Phoenix Online has turned their YouTube channel into a virtual recruitment machine to convert prospects into enrolled students.
4. The Home Depot
Channel:youtube.com/user/HomeDepot Type of videos: How-To / Educational YouTube marketing voice: Your Next-Door Neighbor
The Home Depot stands out in their category because they publish content about subject matter that is relevant to their brand without being over-the-top in promoting the specific products that they sell. The smart marketers at Home Depot know that bringing value to consumers in the form of free educational content does three important things:
1. Establishes Home Depot as a trusted expert resource for Home repairs and renovation projects
2. Promotes the products and tools that they sell by using “product placement” instead of outright commercial-style pitches.
3. Humanizes a faceless corporation: Home Depot has a long history of featuring employees in its advertising campaigns: The tutorials online are hosted by the same straight-talking, orange-apron-wearing folks who work in their stores.
From simple repairs around the house (like replacing a toilet) to more complicated home-renovation projects (like re-tiling the bathroom), the free content offers practical knowledge and money-saving tips. One key point of distinction between The Home Depot and other players in their category is that they have not over-designed their YouTube page and have opted for the standard layout with a custom background image. The overall production values of the videos are not slick and overdone–they feel native to the Internet instead of “made for TV.”
5. Nikefootball
Channel: youtube.com/user/nikefootball Type of videos: Sports YouTube marketing voice: Fanatical British Soccer Hooligan
Few companies can even dream of having the marketing resources of a brand like Nike. Nike has lots of marketing dollars and yes, they hire big celebrities like Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo, but that success on YouTube isn’t necessarily only about hiring big names–it’s about being in concord with their brand.
The takeaway here for marketers is this: To thine own brand be true. Nike as a brand is well known for celebrity sports endorsement deals. Starting when Nike was but a nascent brand with Ilie Nastase, up to the present day, Nike has made its name by associating itself with sports stars. Not that the strategy hasn’t had its share of pitfalls (Nike Air Vick III), but it would be off-strategy and off-brand for Nike to suddenly start releasing a string of poorly-produced, low-budget videos just because the videos live on YouTube.
That being said, some of Nikefootball’s most-viewed videos (mostly from a specifically urban-targeted campaign) are filmed with a mashup of unconventional production equipment like Closed Circuit Security Cameras, Webcams, and Cellphones. But I want to draw a distinction here that there is a difference between cool videos created using experimental filmmaking techniques and just plain garbage.
The Nikefootball channel is targeted to the UK but Nike cleverly maintains Nikefutebol, an additional Portugese language channel to cater to the fierce Brazilian soccer contingent. Indeed, of all the sponsors on YouTube, Nike probably maintains the greatest number of channels (Nike, Nikefootball, Nikefutebol, NikeBasketball, NikeSoccer, NikeGridiron, NikePlusTV, LeBron, insidenikerunning, NikeWomen, NikeWomenUK, nikecorre, nikecorresp, etc…). While not every brand has the resources to maintain so many channels, it is notable that Nike has opted to create a variety of branded and lightly branded channels that cater to the different audiences for each of their product lines instead of trying to silo all their content inside a single Nike channel. This makes it easier for consumers to find content that is relevant to their needs without having to sift through hundreds of extraneous videos.
