The role of social media in marketing anselm

Defining Social Media

• Social media is any form of online publication or presence that allows end users to engage in multi-directional conversations in or around the content on the website.1

• Social Media is a tactic that companies are integrating more often into their overall marketing strategy.

• Though Social Media is a tactic, a strategy must be in place to make it effective and worthwhile.

Why are brands using Social Media?2

Generate awareness

Drive trial

Form/Change Opinion

Establish Need/Want

Product/Service Comparison

Positive Association

Product launch

Influence the Influencers

Drive Action/Traffic

Establish/RegainTrust

Marketing using Social Media

Forming your Social Media strategy:

1. Educate potential customers about your brand

2. Engage current customers to become advocates and build relationships

3. Monitor to listen and respond to those already talking about your brand online

Educate Potential Consumers

• “80 percent of U.S. adults go online, whether at home, work, or elsewhere. Those who surf the Net spend an average of 13 hours per week online,” – cnet.com3

• Huge audience

• They are shopping, researching services, learning about new items, and making purchasing decisions, all from their home or work

How do companies reach these people?

• Just like traditional, you have to create something worth looking at.

• It is the responsibility of the company to provide content to educate the general public about their product/service.

Creating Content

• “Brands should be leveraging the interactive capabilities within social platforms to educate and motivate their consumers through discussion boards, ‘ask the expert’ buttons, threaded discussions, and other media tools like video, images, and reference quotes.”4

• A goal of creating content is to fulfill a need – for your business, for the customer, or for both

How to create content:5

1. Tell stories.2. Give away your own knowledge.3. Interviews with industry personalities.4. Lists – Top 10s, Sexiest Alive, etc.5. Be a contrarian.

The Tools to Engage

- “Social media platforms are tools to monitor, participate in and encourage word of mouth marketing online.” (WOMMA)6

These tools lead to conversations,

which lead to your brand being more

relevant.

The more relevant the conversation, the more likely it will show up in an

organic search.

Engage to Become Advocates

- Brands engage with their audience using those tools. Here are 3 keys to keep in mind when engaging in a relationship with an audience:

Implications for brands as you build a relationship7

1. Brands must socialize with consumers

- Crafting powerful messages is not enough

- Active participation will ensure you are not ignored

2. Brands must develop a credible voice

- Cannot push your message – must be more humble and authentic than traditional messages.

3. Brands must provide a return on emotion to their consumers

- Build a symmetrical relationship – customer must feel that they are gaining as much as the brand (eg: Ideastorm)

-

Case study #1- Joffery’s Coffee and Tea Company8

• Joffery’s asked their agency ‘how can we build our brand using social media?’

• Agency had idea to target a niche audience: Bloggers.

• 2-phase strategy

– Generate buzz and trial of product

– Illicit feedback from community

Phase 1- Joffery’s Coffee and Tea Company

• Named Joffery’s Java Beta Test– Influencers/Bloggers opted-in to participate in beta test

• How to get beta testers?– Used agency blog, email, Twitter, and put a press release

out on the wires and it spread from there. (Mashable, web worker daily, and cnet)

• Why it resonated:– Offered a tangible freebie – (Drive Trial)– Gave bloggers linkage – (Drive action/traffic)– Wrapped the promotion with messaging that was ‘sticky’– It was never a requirement that you had to link to Joffery’s

or write about the test to participate – (establish trust)– It targeted the right people with the right idea (influence)

Phase 1- Joffery’s Coffee and Tea Company

• What happened next:– Bloggers, always

looking for things to write about, wrote their reviews of the sample coffee sent to them.

– Example:

http://video.yahoo.com/playlist/1290780

• The Results:– 1500+ blogs participating– Thousands of mentions for the campaign

throughout the web– Hundreds of comments, responses, and feedback

from bloggers and the Web community– Editorial coverage on sites like: Mashable, CNET,

MarketingFM, MoBuzz TV and others– Organic links generated at scale to the beta site

and Jofferys.com– Strong referral traffic to Jofferys.com in 5 months

surrounding test, trend up in sales from social destinations

– Coverage in traditional media like Entrepreneur Magazine and South Florida Small Business Journal

– Perfect segue into phase 2

Phase 1- Joffery’s Coffee and Tea Company

Phase 2 - Joffery’s Coffee and Tea Company

• Survey sent with the initial trial asked open-ended questions. One of the questions was, “If you could create a coffee flavor, what would it be?”

• Joffery’s Coffee 2.0 is born

• Promotional materials updated to look like a software upgrade

• Sent to 1,000 beta testers with ‘installation flier’

• Those that inspired the blend get to try it before the rest of the world

• Opportunity for new round of publicity and exposure with same strategy and theme

Joffery’s Coffee and Tea Company

• What we learned:– The strategy must be in place before executing the tactics.– Got influencers excited and incited trial and media

exposure– Listened to opinions of customers and reacted accordingly

based on the reviews of their product– Realized opportunity to create a new product based on

feedback.– Forward thinking, like the 2 phase approach, resulted in

carrying a theme across 2 marketing initiatives. The idea was already well received and was used again instead of having to create a new program.

– Generated web traffic and sales

Social Media Monitoring

• Monitoring your Social Media efforts and tracking what people are saying about your brand can give you an advantage in the marketplace.

• Setting up guidelines to measure ROI should be decided on during the planning phase and should mirror what you are already measuring.

• Failure to measure will not allow the brand to justify the spend and brand will be unable to determine how effective their strategy is.

Social Media Monitoring

• Using a program like Social Radar (Infegy) can:– Show trending conversations and buzz– Gauge positivity and negativity of the brand– View Keywords and Topics– Visualize influencers

• Data allows companies to:– Track a product launch– Monitor the response of a campaign– Listen to thoughts and opinions of consumers– Analyze and measure buzz and learn how to create it– Manage a brand’s reputation online

Social Media Monitoring

• Example:

– http://infegy.com/buzzstudy/

• By listening and monitoring, a brand can:

– See opportunities when they arise

– Pro-actively address issues before they get out of control

– Allow for better Customer Relationship Management

Time to build

• Now that a brand has all of these tools, it is up to them to use them to build their plan.

• Social Media is constantly changing, updating, and evolving. Being pro-active can put your brand in a leadership role.

• Planning, educating, engaging, and monitoring are the keys to make Social Media work in a marketing plan

Fin

• "Social media is not a campaign. It is a commitment." - Jeffrey Hayzlett, former Kodak CMO

Questions?

Thanks for taking the time to hear my presentation. I am confident that I would be

the right fit for your team.

Matt Anselm

References:

• 1. http://www.onlinematters.com/glossary.htm

• 2. http://www.webwalker.ca/2008/05/19/a-draft-social-media-metrics-model/

• 3. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10421016-93.html

• 4. http://www.slideshare.net/NorthVenturePartners/9-ways-your-business-could-be-using-social-media-but-probably-isnt

• 5. http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/creating-content-for-social-media/1207/

• 6. http://womma.org/wom101/

• 7. http://www.slideshare.net/advertime/razorfish-fluent-the-social-influence-marketing-report

• 8. http://www.slideshare.net/AdamSinger/joffreys-presentation