MarketingSherpa Blog

Everyone has been playing social media ROI hide-and-seek for some time now. How does social media drive sales? Does the extent to which a firm engages or fails to engage in social marketing impact the bottom line at all? Or, as some have suggested, is the return on social efforts akin to the Loch Ness monster — we’re pretty sure it exists, but nobody seems to be able to track it down.

 What if we’re looking at it from the wrong perspective?

What if social media is more of a process, a series of steps taken at every point in the sales process, which, in totality, makes it more likely to convert leads to clients but, in practice, is difficult or impossible to measure? Or, what if social media has to be done for a certain amount of time and at a certain level of devotion before those benefits manifest?

For instance, a recent study by Dr. Sounman Hong of Harvard University suggests that newspapers’ adoption of Twitter is positively associated with their number of online readers (readers = revenue, right?), and that the strength of the association increases the larger the social network is.

Common sense seems to suggest that social subscribers are added over time, and that a bigger subscriber list, in most cases, indicates a more mature social presence. In other words, we grow into our ROI by continuing to paint the fence and mature our social media efforts.

Another recent study, this one by James “Mick” Andzulis, Nikolaos G. Panagopoulos and Adam Rapp, goes so far as to break this social media evolution down into practical subdivisions. Now we begin to see a pattern emerge. Their take is that our social media efforts evolve though a series of four phases:

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What challenges undermine your marketing department’s potential? When we asked that question to 1,646 marketers while researching for the MarketingSherpa 2012 Executive Guide to Marketing Personnel, here’s how they responded …

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So today’s MarketingSherpa blog post is aimed at helping you overcome challenges #1 and #3: to help you get budget approval to build your skills. With Email Summit 2013 coming up in February, we’ll use a MarketingSherpa Summit as the example for this blog post to show you the factors you should consider when conducting a little internal marketing of your own.

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According to the 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, CMOs see social media and mobile as the developments that will have the biggest impact on email marketing in the near future …

Q. What new developments will most affect your email marketing program in the next 12 months? Select up to five developments.

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So here’s the challenge to you, email marketers of the world. Not only must you integrate social media into your email marketing, you must integrate a rapidly changing social media environment.

Just when you thought you could rest after successfully integrating Twitter and Facebook, for example, along comes Pinterest.

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At MarketingSherpa, we focus on providing case studies and how-to instruction that provide actionable takeaways for our readers. An overwhelming proportion of this content covers digital marketing channels and topics, such as email, social media, website optimization and more.

Of course, traditional marketing channels still have their place, and today’s post looks at two channels we don’t cover very often – the traditional media channels of television and radio advertising.

Several weeks ago, the Consumer Marketing newsletter article was a how-to guide on the trending tactics and tips for the holiday 2012 marketing season.

One tip featured some of the unique aspects of this year’s holiday calendar and how marketers can take advantage of an extra holiday shopping weekend between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

A tip that was not included in the article exploits another unusual aspect of this year’s holiday shopping season – the effect of the presidential race on television and radio advertising.

This tip applies equally to consumer and B2B marketers, and we understand not all of our MarketingSherpa blog readers engage in traditional media marketing. But, for those who plan on television and/or radio advertising over the next several months, this tip provides both a challenge to face and an opportunity to exploit.

JT Hroncich, President, Capitol Media, says the presidential race will impact traditional media buys in two ways – one negative and one positive.

“Thank Barack Obama and for Mitt Romney for your inflated ad budget,” JT states. “Every four years, marketers go head to head with candidates and issues-based organizations for advertising. The number of TV and radio advertising spots tend to decrease, while their rates increase.”

He adds that marketers should be prepared for early spot buys, now through early November, that will be considerably more expensive and harder to get than they are during non-election years. JT says when budgeting for traditional media, expect to spend more for those early spot buys and to consider some late season — mid-November, early December — buys after the season is over. Any unsold inventory can be up for grabs.

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I was reading The Wall Street Journal one morning about food makers using mobile games to market to children. It struck me that content marketing has a major effect on how some companies, especially publishers and media companies, must regard their competition. (It also struck me that my kids need to spend less time on the iPad, but I digress.)

So, I thought I would use that article as inspiration for an example to teach a quick marketing 101 lesson on the three types of competitors you must account for when marketing your product or service. For the sake of this blog post, our company is Spacely Games, and we make mobile games aimed at children.

I also got some input from Paul Clowe, Sr. Director of Finance & Operations, MECLABS, who has recently conducted competitive research here at MECLABS.

Download Competitive Positioning Template

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The Social Media Club of Dallas monthly meetings always feature a presentation on social media for attendees, and earlier this year, I had the chance to take in SMC Dallas’ case study “showcase.”

This event offered up a number of quick-hit social media case studies from a variety of marketers and agencies, and I wanted to provide MarketingSherpa blog readers with a sample of several of these presentations.

Local pizza chain increases ROI more than 300% with charitable effort

Background:  I Fratelli, a restaurant local pizza chain with nine locations, was preparing for its 25^th anniversary. Its brand identity included charitable outreach.

Marketing Opportunity: Understand that local organizations and charities are always in need of fundraising dollars.

Strategy: Create a local social and viral community fundraiser.

Jeff Schick, Director of Integrated Digital Strategy, Online Performance Marketing, said the objective of the effort was to emotionally connect with consumers so they would feel like part of the solution in i Fratelli’s charitable fundraising marketing campaign.

The campaign consisted of five steps:

1. Create a name/identity for the effort – in this case, “Pizza DoughNation.”

2. Get fans excited by allowing them to nominate their favorite charities.

3. Take an “it takes a village” approach, and leverage the networks of fans, charities and organization to spread the word. Seed code words across social media, and have consumers mention these code words during pizza orders.

4. Measure the effort by tracking code words.

5. Give proceeds to the charities. These check presentations were seeded on owned media, but then drove earned media.

The campaign itself used three main outlets: the website and blog, Twitter and Facebook.

The blog was branded as “The Sauce,” and offered a program overview, nomination form, best practices and tips, and past results for viewing.

Twitter was used for geotargeted and contextual conversations on pizza occasions, and content was regularly pushed out timed for lunch and dinner.  Tweets were cross-promoted to both the blog and Facebook. And, influencers were identified to propel the program’s success.

Facebook documented and housed the brand’s “giving back” strategy, and was used to develop relationships with local, regional and national chapters of charities. Also, the Facebook EdgeRank Algorithm was used to focus on an “aggressive news feed optimization strategy.”

Results

• 3,000 unique blog visits for nominations: 86% leads driven by social media, 14% direct URL entry
• Increased Facebook impressions over from 40,000 to 125,000 per month
• Increased retweet rate (generosity) on Twitter from 0 to 19.4%
• Drove ROI in the form of increased sales, ranging from 304% to 381% over first four months of program
• Impacted 32 local charities

Key learnings and takeaways

• Social media results are not just for big brands. SMB brands can leverage social media for attitudinal, behavioral and financial objectives.
• Get the product, service and experience right first.
• Get cross-functional teams involved — that way they begin to place a higher value on social media.
• Don’t be afraid to ask fans and followers for help. Engage with the social media audience.

About the effort, Jeff said, “It wasn’t necessarily a challenge, versus an opportunity. The i Fratelli brand is known for being a part of and giving back to the Dallas-Fort Worth community for the past 25 years. The opportunity was uncovering an idea that leveraged social media to make a greater impact. Historically, the community-giving initiatives were led and funded by i Fratelli alone. By creating the Pizza DoughNation program, fans could take part in and join in on the giving back efforts.”

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Each year, the tactics, strategies and best practices in email marketing continue to evolve. And, in turn, the annual MarketingSherpa Email Awards showcase campaigns that – creatively and strategically – move beyond “batch-and-blast” to utilize fresh tactics and drive great results.

With the Email Awards 2013 (sponsored by Responsys) entry period about to wrap up (you have until this Monday, October 1, to get your entries in), we think it’s a perfect time to revisit one of last year’s “Best-in-Show” winning campaigns. The campaign can provide some ideas about what makes a winner to those last-minute entrants still sitting on the fence and wondering if they should give it a go.

(Of course, if you want to just skip to the head of the line and go right to the entry form, we won’t try to stop you. Just don’t forget to read the Terms and Conditions before you go.)

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Okay, good. You’ve decided to stick around. Using a winning 2012 campaign as our launching point, let’s dive into the key elements of an Email Awards submission.

Traditionally, when organizations want to grow their email lists, they develop contests to draw attention to their email programs. 2012 “B2B Best-in-Show” winner Citrix Online took a different approach, choosing to instead focus on creating and sending valuable content, which was easily shareable for existing subscribers.

Here are some of the criteria Citrix demonstrated en route to a convincing win from within a very competitive category in 2012.

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Let’s face it: Marketing used to be easier, especially for entrepreneurs running small, localized businesses. You once needed nothing more than a Yellow Pages ad to secure a steady stream of business as, let’s say, a local tire shop.

Then came the Internet, and it was still just a matter of having a webpage with your address and contact information. A minor inconvenience, but worth it for those businesses whose customer segments dictated taking extraordinary measures to reach the most tech-savvy people.

Next came Web 2.0, and suddenly it wasn’t enough to just have an online presence anymore. The Web was becoming social. Also, as the bell curve of innovation adoption for the Internet shifted toward mainstream acceptance, it became necessary to engage a wider range of age groups in digital format.

Can potential customers easily research your company and product?

Generation Y has proven itself to be savvy beyond belief in terms of product research, and discriminating to a fault against those brands that don’t make themselves available for online investigation.

A recent study by Lim Ying San and his colleagues from the Multimedia University in Malaysia indicates that a positive significant relationship exists between access and customers’ perceived online retail service quality. Online consumers often want to access a variety of informative sources to obtain up-to-date and useful information for making informed purchasing decisions.

Those sources may include social media, Google and other search engines, and online shopping resources, such as Amazon, as means of price comparison.

In other words, the bare minimum for online marketing and social media for small businesses has changed.

You have no choice

Increasingly, if you can’t be found on the first two pages of a Google search, you don’t exist. If young consumers cannot easily interact with your brand on Facebook, Twitter and, for some companies, even Pinterest, you are worse than out of sight. You are out of mind.

In my house, as I suspect is the case in many Generation Y abodes, we use phone books to hold up the broken coffee table where the leg used to be. Even if I wanted to look at the Yellow Pages, it would only result in spilled coffee. If you want to talk to me about your brand, you need to do the following:

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There are times when one marketing tactic seems to totally dominate the discussion. In recent years, social media has been in that mix, and mobile and its various form factors and latest upgrade release dates are pretty top of mind for plugged-in marketers.

These days, the one tactic I hear about most often when speaking with brand-side practitioners and vendors/agencies/consultants alike is content marketing – particularly how important content and having a content marketing strategy is for B2B marketers.

I did not keep a formal tally, but I am willing to bet content marketing figured in to every presentation at the MarketingSherpa B2B Summit 2012 in some fashion. So much that I made the entire tactic the number one lesson learned in the event recap.

A recent B2B newsletter how-to article featured two B2B content marketing consultants providing tactics on the basics of B2B content marketing. As with many MarketingSherpa articles, while gathering material for the story, I ended up with more great marketing ideas than needed for the piece.

In this case, one of the expert sources for that article, Stephanie Tilton, B2B Content Consultant, Ten Ton Marketing, provided an excellent eight-point breakdown of how to get started with content marketing, and I wanted to share her insight with MarketingSherpa Blog readers.

Here are Stephanie’s eight steps to get started with B2B content marketing:

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The Internet has a wealth of free, public information that could help you uncover sales leads, get closer access to industry influencers, monitor your competition, and curate news for content marketing.

One way to tap into this wealth of data is with a listening dashboard. At one of the roundtables recently held during the B2B Summit 2012 in Orlando, Nancy Chou, Senior Director of Customer Success, LeadFormix, shared a presentation on how B2B marketers could use social media to generate leads by creating a “listening dashboard.”

What is a “listening dashboard”?

A listening dashboard is ultimately a customer intelligence gathering strategy that consists of collecting and combining together smaller pieces of information to produce a larger and more insightful picture of a given topic, brand or prospect.

Here are some of the benefits Nancy listed that a listening dashboard can offer:

• Hear what people are saying, and uncover sales leads whenever people discuss relevant keywords
• Gain closer access to the industry influencers through the article and blog posts they write
• Monitor your competition, gather sales intelligence and beat your competition by following discussions in real time
• Share fresh news and content from industry thought leaders with prospects and customers

How to set up a listening dashboard

If you’re interested in building your own listening dashboard, Nancy provided four steps for building a listening dashboard for free:

1. Create a list of the RSS feeds you typically read
2. Gather additional newsfeeds on specific keywords using sites like alltop for newsfeeds and technorati or Google blog search to gather blogs written by industry thought leaders or topics of interest
3. Start following influential people on Twitter using search engines like listorious and wefollow that categorize Twitter users by keyword
4. Set up a Google Alerts account to be notified whenever a keyword, industry topic, competitor or thought leader releases new content

The steps above will get you started; however, if you need more sophisticated social media monitoring and tracking services, fee-based tracking tools are available.

Related Resources:

How IntraLinks Used Social Media to Generate Twice as Many Sales-ready Leads as Any Other Channel

B2B Lead Generation: 6 social media tactics from 7 experts

Social Media Marketing: 9 tactics for B2B social channel advertising

B2B Social Marketing: 4 ways to build one-to-one relationships with social influencers