[Originally posted by Sam Decker on Bazaarblog]
When planning your social strategy and investments, it’s difficult to know where to start. Here’s a way to think about and organize your decisions, based on my years of sitting in the purchasing and strategist seat.
First, think about how any social technology will impact the prospect or customer’s “purchase momentum.” There are social technologies that create connections and communities, but the ultimate goal is driving purchases. Evaluate how salient any type of UGC or social participation is for researching, shopping, narrowing, comparing, and building confidence for prospects to buy. The closer the interaction is to a prospect’s “task,” the closer it is to helping people make their purchase decisions.
The importance of the second factor (X axis, below) is something I’ve come to realize after years of change leadership at startups, at Dell, and during the last two years seeing how the right investments in customer dialogue accelerates our clients’ social strategies. This is the depth and speed of acceptance of the proposed social initiative. I call this factor the “cultural momentum” of your initiative, and it relates to how quickly you can build excitement internally, bringing “customer oxygen” into your corporate culture! Let me explain…
Social commerce and user-generated content initiatives are new, unproven, and scary for most companies. However, I’ve seen our clients go from anxiety level “9” to hundreds of employees embracing UGC alerts, review, question, and answer reports, and actively engaging with our community managers every week. The right social initiative can create a halo effect around the whole idea of “social” for your company. If you choose the wrong initiative, though, the “social” activity becomes a fringe activity, destined to be cut.
Executives who start with ratings reviews usually start with high anxiety level, but, when they see that 85% reviews are positive, interest peaks. They start looking at the data and content. They see for the first time — perhaps because it’s now right there on their site — how customers talk about their products. It’s enlightening and relevant because it’s about the products they sell (their day-to-day jobs). The voice of the customer spreads throughout the organization and changes business decisions. It just takes one brand, category, or product manager to share a success story of how UGC changed his strategy, buying, negotiation, or merchandising. That story spreads throughout the organization, senior management applauds, and everyone jumps on board.
To evolve, you have to have this kind of momentum to get buy-in for future social initiatives and experiments. Other people in the company have to get excited about this new strategy, because as your social commerce strategy evolves it will start to tap more functions (and it should). So the first social program you enact should be one that drives this cultural momentum.
When evaluating social technologies and programs, you can plot and debate them on this simple 2×2 matrix:
What drives purchase momentum?
Write down what your customers need before they make a purchase. How do they research, shop, and evaluate? Where do they go, who do they consult, and what information do they need?
Then evaluate the social initiative on its ability to meet those shopping needs where the customer is looking. For online retailers, your customers go to shopping portals, they ask friends questions, they search Google, or they go down the purchase path of your site. Would a social network ”walled garden” on your shopping site help the majority of these customers? Would a blog? You might do those for other reasons, but they’re not in the bulls-eye of helping drive purchase momentum for the majority of customers.
Today, Ratings and Reviews are table stakes for retailers because multiple research studies have found that 70-90% of customers seek or want reviews before purchase. Customer search Google for reviews, and you want to be found. Customers use reviews to sort and filter to determine which product to buy. They need to read some level of negative reviews to feel they’ve ”vetted” the product and done their research. They need an “excuse to buy” with their spouse, and a sound bite from some reviews is as good a justification as any! Customer reviews are very aligned with purchase momentum.
What drives cultural momentum?
Three things drive cultural momentum – that internal “buzz” around social initiatives.
1) Results
The language of a business is the P&L. If your social technology can show results as close to the P&L as possible (i.e., revenue, margin, cost reduction), even the CEO will be interested. Bring your results into a senior executive meeting and they will applaud you in front of their managers and peers.
2) Data
Can you make customer dialogue data and content useful and accessible to multiple functions in your organization? I get about four emails a week with product ideas from our clients, and the majority of them revolve around our workbench, reports, and alerts. We knew from the beginning that wide use of the customer voice and data is what would drive adoption. It’s what I’ve called the “customer oxygen” that corporations need. It drives wide interest in customer dialogue and UGC.
3) Cross-functional relevance
If you do a program that is just interesting to the online, marketing, or eCommerce teams, you’re missing a huge opportunity to engage merchants, product development, catalog, stores, customer service, training, research, and other departments. Your goal is deep and wide adoption of social marketing, so the program that has utility for other departments will accelerate cultural momentum. We see clients using answers from our Ask & Answer application for training, research, and copywriting. Reviews can be used by store managers and merchandising in email, catalogs, and advertising. The cultural momentum from these three factors increases the interest in the next investment in customer dialogue.
Where there’s ROI and high internal interest, then investment and resources follow. Simply put, that’s why you prioritize social programs that have purchase momentum and cultural momentum!
Updates from July, 2008
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A Simple Way to Prioritize “Social” Initiatives
WOMMA Editor
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TOMS Shoes: An Inspiring Story Inspires Word of Mouth
WOMMA Editor
This post from the Church of the Customer blog takes a look at how TOMS Shoes has created a great product bursting with WOM-potential. According to the post, the shoes themselves, which were created by former “The Amazing Race” contestant Blake Mycoskie, were inspired by a simple, low-cost shoe he came across in Argentina. Blake linked the shoes to a cause — for every pair sold, a pair is given to shoeless children in third-world countries — and is a natural evangelist for the product, willing to tell the simple, easily spread story about how TOMS came to be to anyone who will listen. According to the post, it’s a perfect recipe for WOM.
The full story at Church of the Customer:
http://www.churchofthecustomer.com/blog/2008/07/customer-evange.html
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A Who’s-Who of Who’s on Twitter
WOMMA Editor
The Fluent Simplicity blog has a great running log of organizations who currently have active Twitter feeds, including links so you can start following right away. It’s a good snapshot of the scope of companies involved in using microblogging as a way to communicate with consumers.
The full story at Fluent Simplicity:
http://blog.fluentsimplicity.com/twitter-brand-index/
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Study Uncovers Gender, Age Demographics of Social Net Users
WOMMA Editor
Rapleaf released a multitude of gender and age demographic data for social network users as a follow-up to its “Study of Social Network Users Vs. Age,” which was released back in June. The data, which comes from a study of more than 49.3 million social network users, provides a snapshot of social network users across a variety of platforms and broken into categories based on age, gender, and number of “friends.”
The full story at Rapleaf:
http://business.rapleaf.com/company_press_2008_07_29.html
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WOMMA Members: Submit Your WOM Case Study, Vie for a Wommie Award
WOMMA Editor
WOMMA has kicked off its third annual Wommie Awards competition — and our members are invited to show off their best word of mouth marketing work. WOMMA’s Wommie Awards were designed to recognize amazing word of mouth marketing, as well as the smart people who make it happen. Have you done something WOM-worthy with word of mouth marketing? If so, this is your chance to get the word out.
All you have to do is submit a 300-word WOM case study to WOMMA’s Case Study Library between now and Sept. 1, 2008, and you’ll be eligible to win the word of mouth marketing industry’s most coveted accolade: a Wommie Award.
2006 & 2007 Wommie Award winners include:
* Affinitive
* Brains on Fire
* The Coca-Cola Company
* Converseon
* Fanscape
* Hass MS&L
* Quicken Loans
* Yahoo!
The 2008 Wommie Award winners will be invited to present their award-winning WOM case studies at WOMMA’s Word of Mouth Marketing Summit, which is taking place Nov. 13-14, 2008, in Las Vegas.
For a list of rules and guidelines or to submit now, visit:
http://www.womma.org/casestudy -
12 Tips for Managing Online Consumer Communities
WOMMA Editor
This article from ZDNet, which follows on the heels of a recent Deloitte, Beeline Labs, and Society for Communications Research study about the word of mouth value in online consumer communities, offers up twelve best-practices for managing these kinds of communities. Some of the tips include: putting the community members first, understanding the differences between online consumer communities and other social media animals, the importance of having community management systems activated, and the importance of finding the right metrics.
The full story at ZDNet:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=190%2090
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Avoiding the Social Media Ego Trap
WOMMA Editor
This blog post from Peter Kim makes an interesting point about how easy it is to let your social networks — especially online social networks — grow to the point where they are unwieldy instead of useful. Online social networks are extremely valuable for building, strengthening, and maintaining important connections, but allowing them to swell beyond the point of manageability transforms something valuable into a nuisance. To be useful, according to Peter, networks need to have a high “signal-to-noise ration,” and recommends pruning them back when they become cumbersome.
The full story at Being Peter Kim:
http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2008/07/social-networki.html
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WOMMA Member News for Today
WOMMA Editor
News by, about, and for WOMMA members:
* WOMMA member company Converseon will be hosting a Social Media Measurement Roundtable on Aug. 7, 2008, at their NYC office. For more information or to RSVP, visit http://blog.converseon.com/2008/07/29/social-media-measurement-rountable-nyc-august-7-2008/.
* Sam Flemming of WOMMA member company CIC and Ian McKee of WOMMA member company Vocanic will be presenting at the Youth Marketing Forum 2008 in Singapore.
* Congratulations to WOMMA member company PopularMedia, which was named as a “Best Marketing Campaign” finalist for the 2008 Stevie Awards.
* Dexter Bustarde of WOMMA member company Sports Media Challenge recently launched a new blog. You can check it out at: http://buzzmanager.wordpress.com/.
* WOMMA member company CDs-2-GO announced LinkBox, a WOMM tool featuring interactive promo graphics that clients add to their websites, blogs, and directories. Visitors to the websites can click the graphics to find a dynamic bundle of functionality that encourages and tracks WOM activity. To learn more, visit: http://www.getLinkBox.com.
Are you speaking at an event or receiving an award? Were you quoted in the press? Are you making a change at work or at home, or otherwise just doing something really cool? Tell us about it and we’ll spread the word! Email editor@womma.org. -
More Thoughts on Best Practices
WOMMA Editor
[Originally posted by Jennifer on Brains on Fire]
We’ve had a lot of discussion on here lately about movements and best practices for online communities (which are often an important part of a movement) and all that good stuff. So, when Geno sent us this post today, I just had to link to it.
It’s a very comprehensive article with a lot of good thoughts in it… so I won’t overkill by dissecting and rehashing it too much here. I will say that one of my favorite points is his #4: Measuring success with community requires new yardsticks. That’s something that I run into a lot in my particular niche. As a “researcher” of sorts, a lot of companies still seem to expect that there’s some magic question or demographic or survey that will guarantee the ROI of their dreams. But the most profound and compelling successes of a community could never (and arguably should never) be “predicted” by insight. Hinchcliffe uses Dell as an example - citing the number of new ideas that have come to them through their community. And we can certainly speak to that experience through RAGE and Fiskateers.
I also loved #9: Mutual ownership and control of communities enables trust and involvement. Really, more than anything… use the word trust, and I’m yours.
So anyway, hats off to a kindred spirit (he even uses circles in one of his charts!)… and go read the full article! -
Education, Understanding Would Boost Social Media Growth
WOMMA Editor
Advertisers are confused by social media, and as a result the space isn’t growing at nearly the speed of its potential, according to a recent study by JupiterResearch. Half of companies say they are spending just 5% of their online advertising budgets on social media advertising. Because each social media space comes with its own slate of tactics and techniques, 30% of advertisers claim they have difficulty figuring out which platforms and which combination of techniques to use to meet their marketing goals. Until marketers get the WOMM education they need and really understand the social media space, adoption of social media marketing techniques will continue to suffer.
The full story at Online Media Daily:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.san&s=87484&Nid=45497&p=393517