Driving profits with social media monitoring
It’s the latest thing out there and a few companies are jumping in to help you monitor social media. The idea behind social media monitoring is to get real time “talk” feedback for your business and leverage it to drive conversions (sales, lead generations, etc).
How are you “listening” to the different platforms of social media?
There are a few independent tools that when looked at together paint a decent picture. Specifically I’m talking about tools that search for keywords you specify in blogs, Twitalyzer which reveals your Twitter “score,” Google alerts, Facebook analytics, etc. That’s all fine and good if you have no budget for an aggregate monitoring tool and it’s a good place to start.
I see the value in an aggregate monitoring tool because from one place you can set alerts when certain buzzwords/phrases reach a certain level so that you can react or join-in the conversation instead of always looking back and reporting to your piers about what “was” said. If you’re not sure who all is out there in the market just tweet that you’re thinking about social media monitoring and you’ll get several replies from eager salespeople willing to show you a demo. Most of them have video demos on their site and that’s always the first place I start well before agreeing to an engaged phone call.
So how can you drive profits with social media monitoring? Consider that your profits will have a bit of a higher break-even point due to the cost of the social media monitoring software. You can gauge whether or not you need to take on this cost simply by monitoring with tools like I mentioned above. If your company only has a handful of followers or you’re not seeing much action in blogs about products and services that you sell then take that into consideration. Take into consideration the profit margin of each product/service sold, etc. All of these things have to be considered before taking the plunge.
I watched an interesting archived Webinar about how one company is connecting their existing Omniture Site Catalyst into social media channels. I’ve explored offerings from: Radian6, Sysomos, Alterian SM2, Infegy, and Attensity360. The jury is still out as I’m doing my research but what will get my business is the ability for 3rd party plug-ins such as Omniture and Salesforce.com. I also want to generate and automate reports to key people in my company. Mashable has some good articles on social media monitoring tools as well.
What makes a good social media monitoring tool the best in class? Does one tool have a clear competitive advantage other the others with value and utility?
Think about the power of strategically monitoring social media in real time (that is more robust than a column set aside for buzzwords in Tweetdeck)! Think about instantly being able to connect to social media influencers the moment you need to. Think about the power of placing a cookie into the browser of a prospect that visits your Web site, then being able to follow her around to see what social media outlets she hits to research her purchasing decision (either before or after she was on your Web site) and then leveraging that to place ads in strategic locations. Think about being able to monitor buzzwords and trending topics in various social media outlets then adapting your content channels to fit into that conversation in real time. All of these things can drive your conversion rate to new profitability.
Ron Scott
Manager of eBusiness Strategy
ronscottjr@gmail.com
Calculating the break-even point for online campaigns
How do you know the point in a campaign where fixed and variable costs are left behind and profitability starts?
You can calculate the break-even point to know the answer to this very important question. Often-times we have to look at a past campaign’s response performance to reasonably predict the future.
According to Wikipedia break-even is defined as the point at which cost or expenses and revenue are equal: there is no net loss or gain, and one has “broken even.”
Important variables:
- The cost of a campaign – Example: $400.
- Net profit – Revenue that exceeds costs for each product sold. Example: After costs the net profit on each product sold is $40.
How can social media marketing increase profitability?
Being an online strategist these days isn’t just about making traditional usability and branding recommendations about improving the conversion rate for companies trying to sell products and services. It has always been about connecting prospects to people inside the company that are passionate about what they’re selling but now connections, and profits, are being made in the social media theater. Social media comes into play to connect prospects to existing customers, or others in their life that can influence them to buy, and then for customer service after the sale.
You can’t just have Web developers living in a vacuum any longer where they receive “business” requirements, pound out code, and technically make something work so they can move on to the next project. Just as a Web application must pass certain quality assurance tests that verify that it works, we must now bring in usability testing to ensure that the Web application works well, and we must also look at how it integrates into social media. How about B2B (business to business) applications? Should they be considered for social media integration? You bet! B2B Web software is used by people for people. Read more…
#Ford seems to be ignoring the social media frenzy…
Personally I’m a Ford customer. I’ve driven Fords for many years now. But what if I watched an exciting Ford video about a new F-150 and I wanted to share it with my social media friend who also will help influence my decision? That’s right.. I can’t share it easily from Ford’s Web site. They’re not using a channel like YouTube, via their Web site anyway, so easily sharing it on my social media networks won’t work. I would have to share the link to the Web site and then try to explain which video I wanted them to look at.
Is Ford ignoring the social media frenzy? Social media is not a fad. Social media formed out of necessity and will never go away.
I can visit YouTube and search for Ford products and find them, however, I shouldn’t have to do that. Make it easier for me to share my purchase considerations within my already established network of social influencers while I’m on the Web site.
Five steps of the marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, preference, action, loyalty – How to capitalize with social media at each stage?
In celebration of Cinco de Mayo 2010, enjoy this blog post with 5 parts 
According to Forrester Research the five stages of the marketing funnel are:
awareness, consideration, preference, action, and loyalty.
From a social media perspective, how do you engage prospects/customers in these five stages?
Awareness stage
The awareness stage is all about introducing your brand to new audiences.
Brand awareness has taken on a new life in the last few years with the explosion of social media. It’s not just about hitting a target audience either. It’s also about hitting the demographic of people that the target audience turns to for product/service-buying advice; or, the social influencer.
Low-consideration products are like soft drinks or chewing gum and prospects don’t seek much buying advice for those. As a consumer, if I spend $2 on a soft drink that I don’t like I don’t have buyer’s remorse because I can recover from that modest investment of time and money rapidly.
A high-consideration product or service would be a college education, a plasma television, or a new car. I think of a high-consideration product/service being something that I can’t easily return and get a refund.
Online marketing: Who needs to be involved in the organization?
Traditional marketing techniques are no longer optimal for business success by themselves
Let’s start out by defining “traditional marketing.” According to http://www.marketingminefield.co.uk, traditional marketing techniques include:
- Strategic alliances
- Direct mail
- Telemarketing
- Print advertising (including billboards, postcards, etc)
- Television advertising
- Radio advertising
- Leaflet marketing
Even in recent years marketing departments have added to traditional marketing techniques by getting involved with pay-per-click, banner, and email campaigns, etc. It’s a really good start but more collaboration needs to take place.
The real problem is that organizations have multiple departments that need to collaborate to have effective marketing success. A typical business model includes information technology, communications/public relations, and marketing departments. All of these departments roll up to an executive branch which can also be isolated and distant in understanding how it all ties together in a modern marketing world. Who is responsible for what budget when it comes to online marketing? Does information technology pick up the bill? Communications? What about the Web analytics that’s going to measure the success of the campaigns employed by the marketing department? Who’s paying for that?
Argument for Usability Testing (UX) in your organization: Pay now or pay later
What is UX testing/study anyway?
- Collection of qualitative data that can have quantitative outputs that lead profitable changes to Web sites.
- Building our Web sites to act, and react, like users expect them to based on experience from other sites that follow basic usability principles.
Why not analyze Web metrics or use your Quality Assurance (QA) group to determine usability?
Because neither one can! Web metrics are only good for quantitative data such as “How many visitors use I.E. 8.0?” or “What was the conversion rate for last month for my orange widgets?” QA teams test products/services/software for business requirements that are written by business analysts . Just because something is possible to do doesn’t mean that it’s usable.
For example let’s say that a business requirement for your online store is that the software asks the customer for a shipping address if it is different than a billing address. The question and shipping form are below-the-fold (requiring the customer to scroll down to see it). Does the Web site technically work and ask for a shipping address? Yes, but what is the result? Most customers that have a different shipping address (than the billing address) will end up receiving their orders in the wrong place. Your QA team will pass this “requirement” as working but it could cost your company extra money in customer service phone calls resulting from unhappy buyers.
The reset/clear button: please go away
I have been using the Web since 1996 and I can’t remember ever using a “reset” or “clear all” button while filling out a form; not even once. Let me correct myself. I’ve never used the reset button for its intended purpose. I have however hit the reset button by mistake a few times when it’s in the spot where “submit” usually would go.
Recently I was reviewing an application/form that was to be used in an organization. I asked the question “Why is there a reset button included?” Not only was there a reset button included but it was extremely close to the “submit” button and it was the same drab color gray. The answer I received was somewhat generic and basically said what you’d expect, “Well, if someone wants to reset the form they could.” So let me understand this.. if someone spends their time filling out my form they might decide to completely wipe it clean and start over? Wouldn’t they just correct the form fields that they felt they got wrong?
Review of the #sears .com home page
October 7, 2009
This is my first Web site home page review post. I will be evaluating Web sites’ home pages based on my own opinion to tell you what I find that organizations are doing; right and wrong. My perspective is from an outsider looking in. It is impossible for me to know what an organization has for future strategic plans or what testing has led them to the current version of their home page.
With that in mind I will review the www.sears.com home page for navigation, site search, call-to-action, social media integration, and overall layout:
Navigation: Sears has done a good job of creating a menu-system that makes sense with one exception that I’ll get to shortly. If you’re looking for a microwave you should know that it could be found in “Appliances.” Hovering over Appliances creates a slide-out menu that doesn’t disappear as you scan and move your cursor around. Very quickly I can spot the link for “microwaves.” Good job!
The only problem that I have with the navigation is that it would appear that I can click on the “plus sign” and that too would make the pop-up menu slide out. However, doing that takes me to the Appliances home page. See red arrow below for the plus sign referenced. I would suggest changing that.
Formula for Web site profitability success: B = V × C × L
The formula for Web site success is: B = V × C × L
Jakob Nielsen published this formula in 2008, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/roi.html
B=business, V=unique visitors, C=conversion rate, and L=(customer) loyalty rate
For some types of organizations there will be other variables to be considered. To be really technical the Dow Jones Industrial Average could be included as well as many other indirect variables. But let’s concentrate on what we can control.
On lead generation Web sites the loyalty rate part of the equation could nearly be dropped. I say “nearly” because there are exceptions to every rule but if a company isn’t selling a widget of some kind then the prospect doesn’t have much need to come back (for sales but they will come back for customer service reasons) once the lead generation form has been submitted.
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