It used to be that clients came to us and said, “We need a new brochure.” Then they started saying, “We need a new website.” Now it’s, “We don’t know what to do with our Facebook page. Can you help?” As an integrated marketing strategy firm, we believe that addressing tactics or channels in a vacuum is a mistake. We always counsel our clients to start at the top (with objectives) then work their way down the ladder to target, then identity, and ultimately, tactics.
This is true when developing a long-term, strategic brand platform and marketing plan as well as when developing a social media program. My previous posts in this series covered the WHO, WHAT and WHY of social media. This one covers the HOW, the strategy development process for social marketing.
Social media deserves a well-defined strategy just like any other channel category needs a guiding strategy. Most companies probably have an overarching brand or marketing strategy, but probably also have (or should have) complementary sub-strategies for:
- Paid media placements
- Public relations
- Direct marketing
- Promotions
- Etc., etc., etc.
Social media should be treated like any other channel category and the following steps should be taken (in order) BEFORE undergoing any tactical implementation:
- Gain consensus among key leaders around a singular objective; what are we trying to accomplish with social media?
- Develop a detailed target profile; it’s important to understand our primary audience demographically, psychologically, and from an online behavioral standpoint
- Create a distinct brand position in the social media space; define how you will relate to your target and how will you stand out from your competitors
- Design a communications plan that will address your objective, most effectively reach your target, and best support your brand identity; in other words, determine which social media outlets, what types of content, and when to post/respond/share
I can’t stress enough how important it is to address each of these items in order before you launch into social media. If you’ve already started your social media endeavors, you can still evaluate your actions using these four guidelines. A sound social media strategy is imperative to put your brand on a path to success. And this strategy should mesh well with the rest of your brand’s marketing program in order to create a seamless experience for your target audience.
That wraps up this brief series on social media. If you haven’t already, please take a few minutes to read more about my additional precautionary guidelines dealing with the WHO, WHAT and WHY of social media.
Author: Emily Griebel, an Integration Architect at McKee Wallwork Cleveland. Emily leads our Integration Architecture practice and is responsible for ensuring our clients’ marketing plans are seamlessly interwoven. If you’re interested in an audit of your marketing plan, you can reach her at EGriebel@mwcmail.com, or @MWCemily on Twitter.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 30th, 2011. 
Businesses that combine email marketing with social media marketing are more successful with their integrated marketing campaigns than those who use email alone.
That was the conclusion gleaned from a study conducted by email marketing provider Constant Contact and absolutely came as no surprise to me because I am huge believer in the fact that an integrated marketing strategy is vital to success and anytime I hear the word “integrated” or “integration” in the context of marketing and advertising, it catches my eye and gets my undivided attention. Unfortunately it would appear, at least from recent surveys and findings that the majority of marketers and marketing type folks are not practicing integration – be it integration of offline and online tactics or any other form integration.
The title of two of my most recent posts say it all…
Marketers Still Not Integrating Their Marketing Strategy & CMO’s To Increase Spending On Social Media But Integration Still Lacking.
However, there is hope… hope that marketers will realize the need for integration across all channels and all departments and eliminate those silos that threaten their very existence. Yes, that was melodramatic but I meant it to be as
I believe the lack of integration is that serious. And there is hope that marketers, – B2B Marketers, B2C Marketers, CMO’s will see results of surveys such as this one and realize that integration is key.
And from the looks of the findings integrating email marketing with social media marketing can prove to be very beneficial…
Constant Contact examined results data from small businesses and nonprofits that have combined their email marketing with social media marketing to those using only email marketing. Key findings include: 
- Faster list growth: From June 2010 through August 2011, those using both social media and email marketing saw 14.43 percent list growth, while those using only email marketing saw 8.96 percent list growth.
- Larger average list size: Those using both tactics have email lists that are 53 percent larger on average than their email-only counterparts.
- Higher click-through rates: The average click-through rate for those using both email and social media marketing was 59.3 basis points higher than for those using email only.
Now, I realize this study dealt with “small” businesses but… I am confident that larger companies would see similar results. I also agree with Rick Jensen, chief sales and marketing officer for Constant Contact who, when asked whether to use email marketing or social media marketing said “… it’s not either/or; it’s both. Use email to communicate with your current customers and social media to reach new customers.”
I’m sure, however, that Mr. Jensen is also a proponent of renting mailing lists of prospects and not just using email marketing for existing customers but he is right in so much as your current customers are, one would assume, accustomed to receiving emails from you, hence the assumed higher click rate, whereas prospects may not be as receptive to email. They may, however, be more apt to engage via social media, which lends itself to a more personal experience, especially during that all-important first-impression part of any relationship.
What do you think? Do you use email marketing? Do you use it alone or with social media marketing? What has your experience been with email marketing and/or social media marketing?
Source: Constant Contact, Google Images, The Star Group, Use Email Marketing And Social Media As Part Of An Integrated Marketing Strategy
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 23rd, 2011.
Yesterday we talked about circles of friends and the basics of engagement-based segmentation. In summary, everybody has three circles (core, community and loose connections) of friends and those circles get smaller and tighter (greater levels of permission, trust and commitment) the closer they are to you in your lives.
We left off with the question, how can you adopt this methodology for business and marketing purposes? First, I think organizations need to change their ‘mindset’ in three big ways:
Moving from a customers to friends
Most companies segment based on purchase behavior. They bucket groups of people as either prospective customers, current customers or loyal customers. What matters in this grouping is what stage the person is in their buying process.
However, to be successful in engagement marketing you need to abandon the concept of customer and instead adopt the use of the term friend. And, I don’t mean just replacing the word like you do when you say ‘fiddlesticks’ when you truly mean f(censored)k. I mean you need to actually treat the relationship as a friendship.
Robots don’t run companies, people do
Yikes, treating people as friends seems soft and fuzzy. I can just hear your corporate robot voice, “We can’t possibly treat people this way. We are, after all, a corporation, and our goal is to make money. Customers are what matters.”
Don’t get me wrong I’m just as much a capitalist as you. Making money is important. But, if you are going to continue making money you need to realize that the path to get there is by building friendships (both on- and offline).
Corporations are ran by humans, not by robots. Humans who organize their lives around friendships, not around ‘customers’. Can you imagine if you only decided to care about your friends if there was some financial transaction involved?
Move from awareness to permission
How does your behavior change now that you’re dealing with friends? Would you phone your friend up at 2 a.m. to offer your 50% off sale? Would you spam them? Would you flood their wall with news of your impending sale? I hope the answer is a resounding no to all of the above.
Once you’ve adopted the ‘friend mindset’ your strategy needs to change. Rather than focusing on building awareness you need to focus on building permission. You need to focus on building the friendship.
The cliffhanger
How do you systematically build friendships? Tune in for part three.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 23rd, 2011.
As digital marketers, it’s easy to get caught up in doing something because it’s the next big thing sweeping the industry. But because we’re digital marketers and everything we do is data-driven, it’s important to take a step back and re-examine our tactics from time to time. Every marketing effort must be tracked and analyzed, allowing us to use the data to pinpoint trends and improve upon effective tactics while doing away with those less successful.
Your social strategy is no different. For example, are you using hashtags within your tweets? If so, are you using them just because everyone else is using them or someone somewhere down the road told you that you should? Or are you actually using them because you carefully tracked your own Twitter messaging, analyzed your findings, and now have a full artillery of data to back up your methods? Didn’t think so.
Luckily, someone out there did. By tracking nearly 450 tweeted messages for three separate Twitter handles over the period of one month, Levelwing was able to compare the click-through rates of tweets with hashtags against those without. Hashtags used throughout the month varied, but always included trigger words the target audience would use to find the products offered by each company behind the accounts.
What they found was consistent across all three accounts – overall, it seemed that when compared to non-hashtagged messages, hashtags resulted in higher engagement and transfer rates:
Account #1: 5% higher click-through success rate using hashtags
Account #2: 11% higher click-through success rate using hashtags
Account #3: 11% higher click-through success rate using hashtags
Need help getting started? Here are a few basic tips on how to use hashtags as part of your social strategy:
1. Before including the hashtag, look it up to be sure it’s actually being used elsewhere on Twitter. If no one else is using it, it’s probably not a great term. One way to do this is through hashtags.org.
2. While researching the term, look at how it’s being used across Twitter, not just how often. What might sound like a great keyword to you may actually be used more frequently in a completely different context, sometimes a very negative context. Hardly something you want to place your brand next to.
3. Consumers want to categorize you. Make it easier for them to understand what you do by using hashtags that are relevant to your industry, company and product/service offering.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Aug 31st, 2011.
Image by Arenamontanus via Flickr
This is the fourth part of a series of reflective articles on the future of buyer personas. In part 1 through part 3 I focused primarily on misconceptions, what needed to change, and why changes must take place in buyer persona development in the social age. In part 4, I would like to center on the role needed in organizations for buyer persona development to adapt to social business.
When looking at the future role of buyer persona development as well as a specific future role within organizations, one must first visit the origins of the term buyer persona. When a term becomes viral, as the term buyer persona did just a few short years ago, it can lose its’ original meaning as well as association with its origin and the professional foundation under which it originated. The term has been used in many variant ways, especially over the past two years. It has been used inaccurately and without full understanding of what exactly the term represents. By talking about the future role, I hope that simultaneously it will help to clarify the unfortunate misunderstanding that exists most prominently in marketing.
The Science of Buyer Persona Research
Buyer persona research has been and will always be about understanding buyer behaviors and perceptions. The actual persona itself, the archetype created, is a representation derived from researching buyer behaviors and is meant to be an interpretative tool. The type of research needed to uncover deep behavioral and cultural percepts are those closely associated with participant-observation methods aligned with anthropology and the ethnographic research techniques commonly utilized by this social science.
The primary purpose for researching buyer behavior is to gain revealing insights into how and why buyers buy. I also will note here that the expression, how and why buyers buy, has also gone viral and has lost its original meaning. Getting at how and why buyers buy is an anthropological inspired behavioral and cultural research effort and not a market or sales research question. It has been misinterpreted to focus solely on the sales questions of buying process, buying stages, decision criteria, and the many other terms used commonly in sales related probing methods. Anthropological methods are extremely important because over 50% of buyer behavior indicators related to how and why buyers buy are determined by social and cultural factors. Conventional market research and sales research or probing methods do not provide insight into these all important determinants. It does not provide the deep understanding that paves the way for shaping better as well as innovative strategies leading to improved profitability and market share.
The distinction is crucial for buyer personas couched in market and sales research methods is a capture of reactive actions. It is devoid of meaning related to goals and context. It will give you a chronological stage view perhaps but will not give you meaningful social contexts that can reshape strategies. For example, you can have two senior IT executives working in different corporations and environments. It is fair to say that if you examine their buying processes and decision criteria’s and other sales related variables, you would wind up with very similar buyer profiles. The social and cultural context however for each may be entirely different and this is where organizations need to gain revealing insight in order to shape strategies for specific markets and groups of buyers.
At this writing, I am very concerned about where the emerging concept of content marketing is heading because as I see it, is caught up in the viral spun around buyer personas incorrectly. Recent qualitative research I’ve conducted show early signs that buyers really do not see anything different. I believe the root of this is related to the fact that while the B2B marketing community may be calling what they do differently – as in content marketing – buyers are still seeing the push messaging that result from conventional market research and sales probing techniques. The term buyer persona is being defined incorrectly as a target profile for content as opposed to an informing process that shapes content strategy.
The New Role of Buyer Behavior Research
As we continue to witness the evolving social age, the need for buyer behavior research becomes more important than ever. Social and cultural contexts are increasingly becoming more prominent in viewing how and why buyers buy. The term Social Customer is becoming more prevalent and there are two major components of this term:
- Social Buyer: I’ve used this term frequently in association with buyer personas to identify the Social B2B Buyer as a category in the social age. The obvious focus here is on the purchase decision.
- Social Consumer: This term is related to B2C and the focus is on consumerism and consumption.
Specifically to the social buyer, newly formed social interactions and social perceptions are playing a major role in preferences towards products, services, solutions, and relationships. The future role of buyer persona development in organizations will need to focus on identifying the deeper social fabric that are forming and how they play into the overall buyer experience. Social Buyer Personas that are derived from anthropological and ethnographic research can help organizations to identify social and cultural identities as well as be used as a communications platform for aligning their organizations to buyer goals.
The future of buyer personas resides in a new role and framework for organizations. That role is one of a Social Buyer Behaviorist and Anthropologist. A role that uses existing and new social science methods combined with that of developing social buyer personas to create an interface for the research. I recently wrote a series on Social Buyerology that attempted to address such a new role and framework. This role and framework is important also for another crucial reason: if buyer personas are developed and created through the prisms of marketing and sales research orientation, they will tend to be self-referential views of target buyers (an inside-out view) as opposed to a means for discovering not so obvious and hidden meanings that make up social and cultural contexts.
We are witnessing a social revolution today and it is literally changing the face of B2B business. Buyer persona development is not excluded from the impact. Buyer persona development must be coupled with the techniques of the social sciences of social and business anthropology to develop a new role and framework for being of value to strategy within organizations. The term and the practice of buyer persona development must once again be firmly rooted in its origins and original meaning. The future of buyer personas is truly social – it is the interpretive tool organizations will need to make sense of the social anthropological inspired research that reveal deep insights about the evolving social buying behaviors of buyers today.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Aug 5th, 2011.
