Why Social Media Marketing

Why Social Media Marketing?

July 2010

By Connie Bensen

Director of Social Media, Alterian

Agenda

• The Challenge Facing Today’s Marketers

• Thinking Like a Customer

• The New Marketing

• Sales Resources

The Challenge

• Customers are in charge of brands now.

• From a high level, organizations need to shift their

marketing to include the social aspect.

Alterian is not exempt and it’s probably even more

important that we do so because we sell these products.

We cannot afford to be a ‘brand at risk’.

Sales Tool: Brands at Risk Report – lots of data

Social Media Marketing is the newest channel

People are expressing themselves• about the good

• and the bad!

And they are getting very adept

at BLOCKING marketing messages!

Customers are

In Charge

Where is

Your Brand At?

Source: David Armano

Forrester estimates that only 40% are aware of tools like SM2

Thinking Like a Customer – What are They Doing?

• Step 1: Seeking info

• Step 2: On website as a customer

• Step 3: After engaging with website

Every Company Needs a

Digital Footprint

Step 1: Seeking info

• Google search

– What questions are customers asking?

• Steps – outline the sales cycle

– What question is asked at each point

– What info do people need? (content strategy)

• Social networks – direct traffic (engagement strategy)

– Comments on blogs

– Twitter conversations

– LinkedIn, YouTube, slideshare, etc

• Engaging Times Blog

• Adwords – direct traffic to corporate presences

• Campaigns – traditional marketing effort (campaign

strategies)

Step 2: On website as a customer – (website strategy)

– Do I find what I’m looking for?

– Does it engage me?

– Does it cause me to take an action? Do I know what to do next?

– Does it solve my problem or the question I asked?

– Do I find it valuable (or corporate marketing speak)?

– Is the content written in terminology I understand?

Step 3: After engaging with website

• How does the company interact with me afterwards?

• Do I get put on 1 big email list? Or is it a segmented list

that suits my niche interest?

• Do I receive messages that are pitches? Or are they

offering information? (Do they make me want to

unsubscribe?)

• Do the messages I receive just talk at me? Or are they

listening with surveys, trackable links to blog posts, &

helpful information)

• Are the autoresponder messages helpful? Or are they

pitches? Do they cause me to want to forward them?

The New Marketing – an Ongoing Process (not a campaign)

Marketers have 3 priorities now:

• To be found by search engines:

– organic search is imperative – it’s created thru content & an

online presence

– It can’t be bought by using agencies, adwords, or pay per click

campaigns

• An online presence

– Requires interaction on blogs & social networks – community

mgrs or someone

– Content that is engaging and provides value

• Traditional marketing

– Email marketing can be utilized for nurturing leads obtained from

the website

– Autoresponders and nurturing campaigns are imperative

Why SM2?

Listening is the First Step of Social Media Marketing

Everything is

Measurable

Your Site

Web Analytics

Twitter

Blogs Wikis

Facebook

LinkedIn

Message

Boards

YouTube

Customers are talking everywhere

• Bring outside ideas into the organization• Generate more word of mouth• Increase customer loyalty• Increase product/brand awareness• Improve new product success ratios• Improve public relations effectiveness• Reduce customer acquisition costs• Reduce customer support costs• Reduce market research costs• Reduce product development costs

Potential business objectives

Find Your Digital Footprint using a Brand Audit

Measure your Brand

• Volume of conversations

• Sentiment & tone

• Influencers

• Sources by

– online

– physical location

• Confirm what you do know

• Identify New Opportunities

• Benchmark

Build your Digital Footprint with Social Media Campaigns

Get in the game!

• Historical data back to 2007

• Actionable data

• Identify new

communities to

engage in

• Reporting

– High level to

granular

Find your Customer’s expressing their Needs

…beyond Twitter

• Blogs

• Flickr

• Forums

• Build WOM

• Organic SEO

• Ward off crises

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk

Innovate with Industry & Competitive Insight

Find what you don’t know

• Identify new markets and trends

• Competitive strengths & weaknesses

• Sentiment around competition

Create products that consumers want

Do opinions online matter?

• Monitor volume, sentiment and trending topics

• Customizable dictionary

• Efficiently identify influencers

Influence Public Relations

Are you listening for their questions?

• Lead generation

– Higher quality leads

– Reduce need for cold calling

• Build relationships

• Shorten sales cycle

Lead gen and warm calling for Sales

Increase your SEO

Insight into consumers minds

• Theme clouds

– Brand

– Competitors

– Industry

• Author tag clouds

• Link building

• PPC

Value and ROI

Use Case Value/ROI

Brand Audit Identify opportunities in Social Media

Social Media Campaigns Measure progress of Social Media efforts

Corporate Marketing Increased sales & rate of return on ad spend

Customer Service Increased satisfaction, brand loyalty,

awareness

Competitive Insight Identify differentiating features & innovate

Public Relations Efficient use of time & identify influencers

Sales – Lead Generation Increased sales & shortened sales cycle

Search Engine Optimization More effective SEO & organic visibility

Product Development Reduced market research costs

HR Reduced hiring costs & less churn

The Opportunities (Use cases for SM monitoring)

Brand Audit

Corporate Marketing

Public Relations

Competitive Insight

Product Development

Search Engine Optimization

Customer Service

Social Media Campaigns

Sales – Lead Gen

Time

Enga

gem

en

t

8 Stages of Listening

• No objective at all – using free tools

• Tracking of brand mentions

• Identifying market risks and opportunities

• Improving Campaign Efficiency

• Measuring Customer satisfaction

• Responding to customer inquiry

• Better understand customers

• Being proactive and anticipating customers

Source: Jeremiah Owyang

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/11/10/evolution-the-eight-stages-of-listening/

The Potential for using SM2

Advantages of using a social media monitoring tool

• Efficiency

• Effective identification

• Analytics

• Reporting

– Granular

– High level

Resources

• Brands at Risk Report

– http://www.alterian.com/resource-

links/campaigns/brandsatrisk/brands-at-risk

• Little Books of Marketing

• ROI Series - White Papers on 10 Use Cases of Social

Media Monitoring

– http://socialmedia.alterian.com/learn-more/roi/