MarketingSherpa Blog

Multichannel marketing strategies can be powerful sales and awareness drivers, but they can present challenges to maintaining consistent brand messaging and sales performance.

The marketers at luxury jewelry brand Scott Kay, for example, reach audiences through several offline and online channels, including:
o Website
o Email
o Radio
o Outdoor
o Direct mail
o Retail partnerships

Marketing through so many channels complicates achieving continuously improving results, says Dan Scott, CMO, Scott Kay.

“There is no single silver bullet or one structure or one formula in multichannel marketing that will work,” Scott says. “There has to be assessment and reassessment each year of how the campaigns were structured, if they worked properly and what we can do better.”

Here are two tactics the team uses:

– Test the waters

Scott’s team tests multichannel messages and materials in a small group of retailers and focus groups before releasing them in a broader market. If results are positive, the campaigns are broadened to 10 select markets. From there, the team may adjust the messaging in specific markets to improve resonance and response.

“If in a six-month period the metrics are not performing as forecasted, then we’ll make additional changes,” Scott says.

– Establish checks and balances

The team also uses a system of checks and balances to ensure marketing messages are consistent across channels. For example, the team requires Scott Kay’s retail partners to sign a compliance agreement before selling its products. Part of that agreement requires retailers to submit marketing campaign materials for Scott Kay’s approval.

For example, one retailer wanted to invest heavily in marketing its Scott Kay collection in nearby movie theaters.

“We had to respectfully reject that,” Scott says. “The basis being that the audience was too widespread, too difficult to quantify and the environment too pedestrian for the luxury brand that we represent.”

The time for companies to get more value from online conversations is fast approaching, says Wendy Lea, CEO, Get Satisfaction, a social application provider.

Social media can help satisfy a variety of business goals — such as cutting support costs and informing product design — but who is responsible for ensuring these goals are well met? The likely answer for most companies is no one.

Lea sees the need for a new role, a community manager, at many companies. This person would interact with an online community and ensure it yielded real business results.

“This is a non-trivial leadership role that I do not think most companies have really begun to understand how to take advantage of,” Lea says.

The key responsibilities and traits of a good community manager are still up in the air, Lea says. However, the person will likely need to have:
o Strong command of brand voice and style
o Strong writing skills
o Deep knowledge of company products and service
o Ability to work with multiple branches of the business

“I think this is a very complex and sophisticated role that sits right in the middle of CRM,” Lea says. “It’s a whole other skill and knowledge set. I know there are some books about it, but how many corporations are really making sure their folks involved in this are developed to do the work rather than just picking people who understand social media?”

Get Satisfaction is planning a pioneer effort to train community managers for other companies, Lea says. Although the role is somewhat undefined today, you can expect announcements and more information from her team over the next six months.

Does your team have a community manager? Please tell us about them in the comments…

I’ve been digging through MarketingSherpa’s new 2011 Search Marketing Benchmark Report: SEO Edition and finding very interesting data describing social media’s impact on SEO performance.

The most interested stat I came across noted that marketers working in social media reported an average 27% conversion rate for organic search traffic. Those not working in social media reported 17%. That is a 58.8% difference — which is huge.

What could cause this disparity?

Possible explanations are found in a second chart. Marketers were asked whether social media or SEO were effective marketing tactics for achieving a list of objectives.

More marketers said SEO, rather than social media, was a “very effective” way to:
o Increase brand or product awareness (42% vs. 37%)
o Increase website traffic (57% vs. 33%)
o Increase lead generation (35% vs. 18%)
o Increase offline sales revenue (17% vs. 10%)
o Increase online sales revenue (26% vs. 9%)

On the flipside, more marketers said social media was a “very effective” way to:
o Improve brand or product reputation (37% vs. 29%)
o Improve public relations (36% vs. 27%)

Clearly, SEO is more effective at attracting attention and ultimately converting people. However, social media is more likely to increase positive thinking around a product and brand.

This leads me to a hypothesis: marketers who engage in SEO and social media have 58.8% higher conversion rates for organic traffic because their social media work has increased trust in their brands and products.

But that might not be the whole story.

As pointed out in the benchmark report’s analysis, working in social media provides additional benefits. Social profiles and content are indexed by search engines and added to results pages. These additional results can push down a brand’s competition, increasing its organic conversion rates. Also, the social results can broaden the variety of content on a SERP and help brands appeal to more people.

The data are very interesting. If your team has well established SEO and social media strategies, take a look at your stats and look for similar trends. It just might make you smile.

As the mobile Internet steadily gains in popularity, the future of mobile commerce in the U.S. is anybody’s guess. However, countries with widespread mobile Web access might provide some clues.

“Japan had a more-advanced mobile market,” says Matthew Snyder, CEO, ADObjects, a mobile strategy consultancy and agency. “It’s debatable whether it is more advanced or not these days.”

Snyder has worked in mobile and consumer electronics for over two decades. He spent much of that time in Japan, where access to the mobile Web is above 90%, he says. In the U.S., 31.9% of mobile subscribers used a mobile Web browser in a three-month average ending in May 2010, according to comScore.

Widespread mobile Web adoption has created a variety of opportunities for Japanese businesses to reach consumers, and also a variety of opportunities for consumers to interact with businesses.

For example, “every single McDonalds in Japan is equipped with mobile payments,” Snyder says. “It started about two years ago. As of this summer, every single McDonald’s was equipped.”

Tools such as mobile wallets have not caught on in the U.S., due in part to our comparatively limited mobile Web adoption — but change may be on the horizon.

“Even though the analysts have said it’s going to take a few years before we see 50% mobile Internet penetration, my gut tells me that we’ll be in 70% to 80% over the next couple of years very rapidly,” Snyder says.

Even if the U.S. market adopts some characteristics of the Japanese and other well-developed mobile markets, the U.S. is likely to be unique in some respects due to the strong presence of branded apps.

“In terms of mobile usage and mobile marketing, Japan is much more advanced. In terms of what we’ve seen in engagement, rich media, applications, and brand penetration into the space, we’re seeing a lot more in North America through the iPhone and the Android,” Snyder says.

I spoke with Snyder for an up-coming article on tactics for testing mobile marketing as part of a team’s overall marketing strategy — not as a one-off, tack-on tactic. Keep an eye on our newsletters to learn more.

Old Spice wrapped up a phenomenal viral marketing campaign this week that significantly leveraged social media channels, just as MarketingSherpa published our 2010 Viral and Social Marketing Hall of Fame.

What started as a funny Super Bowl Ad featuring a spokesman with an over-the-top ego and a penchant for manly nonsense turned into millions of views on YouTube this winter. The agency behind the ad, Wieden+Kennedy, followed up with additional videos, but the effort didn’t stop there.

For two days this week, the agency posted dozens of video responses to comments on Old Spice’s YouTube, Facebook and Twitter profiles. Every response is a unique, hilarious video of the Old Spice spokesman, actor Isaiah Mustafa, standing in a towel in front of a shower.

The videos are steeped in the same humor as the initial ads — supplying dozens of additional videos to an audience that expressed a strong craving for them. They also gave the campaign an exciting, real-time creative edge by directly interacting with the audience and quickly churning out videos.

To further the campaign’s reach, the team posted video responses to celebrities and other folks with major online followings, including:
o Perez Hilton — celebrity gossip blogger
o George Stephanopoulos — ABC News journalist
o Gizmodo — technology blog
o Alyssa Milano — American actress
o Kevin Rose — founder of Digg and other startups

Responding to these gatekeepers with personalized, high-profile and hilarious videos proved flattering enough to earn mentions in their respective media outlets. This brought the campaign to new audiences, further building the viral snowball.

Iain Tait, Global Interactive Creative Director, Wieden+Kennedy, told Kai Ryssdal on American Public Media’s Marketplace that the effort “certainly makes people kind of consider Old Spice in a new light again. And that has certainly been brought out in some of the conversations that we’re seeing online.”

With such a stunning viral success, where does the campaign go from here?

UPDATE 7/28: The campaign is proving to be a smashing success. Nielsen reports sales of Old Spice Body Wash increased 107% over the past month and 55% over the last three months, according to Brandweek.

There is an array of webpage testing solutions available, helping marketers improve their landing pages, homepages and other online real estate. With so many options, it’s easy to get wrapped up in selecting tools, setting them up and testing them.

The problem is some marketers will spend months selecting and deploying a tool only to A/B test button colors, or different images on the same layout, says Lance Loveday, CEO, Closed Loop Marketing.

“To me, that feels like running 25 miles of a marathon and walking the last one.”

Time is much better invested in researching page data and designing tests that have the strongest likelihood of success, Loveday says.

“90% of your time should be in the planning and actual analysis and coming up with insights, and 10% should be in the technology.”

We spoke with Loveday for an upcoming MarketingSherpa article on how to select better landing page tests. One key to Loveday’s strategy is gathering thorough research, including:
o Analytics data
o Click-tracking analysis
o Qualitative usability studies
o Expert reviews

“We try to marry up quantitative analytics data with qualitative user experience and user profile information to develop some hypotheses for what the problem areas [on a page] might be,” Loveday says.

By digging through this information, your team can identify areas for improvement, attempt to diagnose problems and test solutions. Furthermore, you can estimate tests’ potential impact and prioritize those expected to bring the greatest benefit. Keep an eye on our Great Minds newsletter for more information.

Today’s the publishing date for MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition, and the report has shaped up to be a valuable tool for strategic planning.

One chart I found particularly interesting (out of the 160 in the book) compares the conversion rates for organic traffic between organizations that incorporate social media into their search campaigns and those that do not. You can see the chart in the free executive summary.

Marketers who mix social and search report a 27% conversion rate for organic search traffic, while those who do not report a 17% rate. This disparity is likely due to several factors:

– First, social media marketing is known to improve brands’ reputations online, and a brand with a stronger reputation is more likely to convert visitors.

– Second, a brand’s social media profiles often appear in searches for the brand, which adds to its number of search engine results and increases the brand’s perceived credibility.

– Finally, additional links on the SERPs push down relevant competitors, making the searcher more likely to engage with the brand.

The first point is further supported by additional data in the Benchmark Report. Marketers more often reported social media than SEO as being very effective at improving reputation and public relations.

SEO, however, was more often reported as being very effective at increasing:
o Awareness
o Website traffic
o Lead generation
o Offline revenue
o Online revenue

Reviewing all of these facts reveals SEO as a much stronger contributor than social media to the bottom line — but it also shows social media can dramatically improve SEO’s impact by boosting its conversion rates.

Is your company seeing similar trends? Or something different? We welcome your comments…

Social ecommerce technology has lifted sales and turned one-way websites into two-way conversations. Ratings and reviews, for example, have tremendously improved the consumers’ shopping experience, as well as many marketers’ conversion rates.

Frank Malsbenden, VP and General Manager, Shoeline.com and his team are already looking for the next winning interactive ecommerce feature. The team maintains several footwear ecommerce sites, including SuperShoes.com, which Maslbenden calls “the perfect sandbox.”

The team often tests new ideas on this smaller site, giving it a unique feature set that’s worth browsing for ideas. Features include:

– One-click voting and tagging

On product pages, visitors can click to declare they “like” or “hate” a product. A score is tallied on the page. They can also tag products, similar to how blog posts are tagged. Visitors can view the most “liked” or “hated” products, or products bearing the same user-generated tag.

– Drag-and-drop sharing

On product category pages, visitors can click product images and drag them onto icons to share their links on Facebook, Twitter or via email.

– Profile and live feed

Customers are given profile pages, where they can track all the shoes they’ve “liked,” “hated,” tagged and shared. They can create a vanity URL and have their profile’s page views tallied and displayed. The profile also shows a live feed of all activity on the site, such as:
o Products recently viewed
o Products recently liked, hated, shared or emailed

Malsbenden’s team is testing these features and others, such as a possible live feed integration on the homepage. Features they deem as winners will be incorporated into the fall redesign of the team’s flagship website, Shoeline.com.

People who follow your social media updates are likely fans of your brand. Their motivations may vary, but if they’re reading and responding to your content, then they know who you are and they like hearing from you.

“It’s not really surprising that, like search traffic, social media traffic tends to be very qualified,” says Maura Ginty, Senior Manager, Search and Social, Autodesk. “It can be small in volume, but it’s really qualified.”

Ginty’s team uncovered this insight by monitoring social media traffic to Autodesk’s website and analyzing the actions visitors took after arrival. Obtaining data around social media is not difficult, Ginty says. The hard part is using it.

“I think people end up feeling like the data is going to answer their question, but it’s the interpretation of all that data and the filtering of all that volume that really helps provide insight into what to do next,” she says. (Keep an eye on our Great Minds newsletter for an up-coming article on how to improve social media measurement).

Ginty’s team started synthesizing data to uncover the social impact of online marketing campaigns, in part, by using a tool created with Covario. For example, the team can calculate the velocity of a marketing message — the number of people a message reaches in a certain amount of time in social media — and combine it with a sentiment analysis. This information helps the team gauge how quickly messages spread, how people respond, and which efforts have strong social appeal.

“We’ve seen from different areas that a lot of the push of information will end up happening in the first 24 hours,” Ginty says.

Social media is a new channel with unique brand/customer interactions that can be tested and measured. I am excited to see how other industry leaders will start measuring and tweaking their social efforts to improve everything from brand image to conversion rates.

Are you doing any testing in social? Let us know in the comments…

I am in awe of the amount of online buzz generated by ABC’s recently completed television series, Lost. On its Facebook fan page alone, wall posts about the finale each captured 1,200 to 19,000 comments to date.

In fact, Lost generated the most social media engagement of any television show from February through April, the New York Times reports.

How did ABC’s team use Facebook to build such a gargantuan amount of chatter? Here are some tactics I can see from Lost’s fan page:

1. Build anticipation

As far back as three weeks before the show’s May 23 finale, the team posted reminders and teasers about the event. We’ve seen a similar tactic used in Twitter to tease a sales event.

During the final week, ABC posted at least one mention per day. It posted four times on the final day, capturing tens-of-thousands of comments.

2. Provide relevant content

Throughout the countdown, the team sent fans links to Lost-related content, such as:
o A Facebook event page
o A musical tribute
o Video clips

Providing relevant, high-quality content is important to keeping fans engaged. Otherwise they may decide to interact elsewhere.

3. Promote other channels

ABC set up a chat service on its website for fans to discuss the finale in real time as it aired, and posted about it on Lost’s Facebook page. The team also posted a link to a free archive on its website of previously aired episodes and asked fans to “revisit all their favorite moments.”

I am not naive enough to believe these tactics alone were enough to generate the level of buzz the team realized. Lost is a widely popular and well-promoted national television show — it’s going to generate some buzz. However, I do believe these tactics helped ABC bring more attention from its Facebook fans to Lost’s finale.