Digital strategies like social marketing will influence at least 80% of consumers' discretionary spending by 2015, according to Gartner. The findings, released in a joint study with ExactTarget, analyze multichannel marketing techniques, as well as tips to lead consumers to purchases. The Marketer's Guide to Multichannel Campaign Management suggests that brands must move away from running campaigns individually and toward the integration of many campaigns, such as email, social, search, voice, video and more. The strategy supports consumers moving to a "hyper-connected" model, where many gain access to online content through more than one device simultaneously. Most will connect through some form of mobile device. eMarketer estimates access through nearly 116 million U.S. smartphones this year. Gartner estimates that 6.7 billion devices will connect to the Internet by 2014. Mass-market campaigns on average get a 2% response rate. Personalized email messages on mobile devices, however, continue to climb. In fact, the percent of consumers who opened email on mobile devices rose "double digits" during the first half of 2012, according to Jeffrey Rohrs, head of marketing research at ExactTarget. As marketers prepare for the 2012 holiday season, Rohrs said a successful cross-channel strategy requires knowledge of device, channel and content preferences for a specific campaign. The study approached 1,500 U.S. online consumers on online interactions and brand expectation. Sixty-six percent of participants made a purchase after receiving an email marketing message, compared with 16% after receiving a text marketing message. About 76% prefer email compared with other channels for receiving customer services messages, but 25% prefer text message when it comes to real-time travel alerts. Nine percent of consumers age 25-34 prefer text message over other channels for delivering tickets to an event purchased online. Sixty-six percent of teens ages 15 to 17 prefer email compared with 4% on Facebook when it comes to permission-based marketing. The same age group also admits to making a purchase after seeing a message about the product on Facebook. When it comes to social media, 20% of Twitter users tweet weekly. Sixteen percent of survey participants ages 15 to 17 said they made a purchase after seeing a message on Twitter, and 20% made a purchase after receiving a message on Facebook. Online purchases continue to rise. U.S. retail e-commerce sales for online retail spending rose 15% to $43.2 billion in the second quarter of 2012 compared with the year-ago quarter, according to comScore. The uptick represents 11 consecutive quarters of positive year-on-year growth and seven consecutive quarters of double-digit growth.
Digital strategies like social marketing will influence at least 80% of consumers' discretionary spending by 2015, according to Gartner. The findings, released in a joint study with ExactTarget, analyze multichannel marketing techniques, as well as tips to lead consumers to purchases. The Marketer's Guide to Multichannel Campaign Management suggests that brands must move away from running campaigns individually and toward the integration of many campaigns, such as email, social, search, voice, video and more. The strategy supports consumers moving to a "hyper-connected" model, where many gain access to online content through more than one device simultaneously. Most will connect through some form of mobile device. eMarketer estimates access through nearly 116 million U.S. smartphones this year. Gartner estimates that 6.7 billion devices will connect to the Internet by 2014. Mass-market campaigns on average get a 2% response rate. Personalized email messages on mobile devices, however, continue to climb. In fact, the percent of consumers who opened email on mobile devices rose "double digits" during the first half of 2012, according to Jeffrey Rohrs, head of marketing research at ExactTarget. As marketers prepare for the 2012 holiday season, Rohrs said a successful cross-channel strategy requires knowledge of device, channel and content preferences for a specific campaign. The study approached 1,500 U.S. online consumers on online interactions and brand expectation. Sixty-six percent of participants made a purchase after receiving an email marketing message, compared with 16% after receiving a text marketing message. About 76% prefer email compared with other channels for receiving customer services messages, but 25% prefer text message when it comes to real-time travel alerts. Nine percent of consumers age 25-34 prefer text message over other channels for delivering tickets to an event purchased online. Sixty-six percent of teens ages 15 to 17 prefer email compared with 4% on Facebook when it comes to permission-based marketing. The same age group also admits to making a purchase after seeing a message about the product on Facebook. When it comes to social media, 20% of Twitter users tweet weekly. Sixteen percent of survey participants ages 15 to 17 said they made a purchase after seeing a message on Twitter, and 20% made a purchase after receiving a message on Facebook. Online purchases continue to rise. U.S. retail e-commerce sales for online retail spending rose 15% to $43.2 billion in the second quarter of 2012 compared with the year-ago quarter, according to comScore. The uptick represents 11 consecutive quarters of positive year-on-year growth and seven consecutive quarters of double-digit growth.
Facebook, once the industry darling, is now receiving close scrutiny and somewhat negative sentiment. Starting in the weeks leading up to the IPO, continuing with questions about mobile monetization, and through the recent announcement about the nearly 9% of problem accounts, Facebook seems to be facing a growing bandwagon of ill will. In late June, Simon Dumenco published an article about how the law of diminishing returns will impact, in Saul Hansell’s term, “Zuckerberg’s Law.” The idea is simple: Zuckerberg’s Law says that sharing output -– content -- on Facebook will double in short periods (like Moore’s Law on computing capability and transistors), and that if true, this flood of content will either: A) Drown out the signal, making it impossible for marketers to be seen or heard, or B) Far exceed the ability of individuals to consume or keep up with content volume, thus reducing the utility of, or interest in, the platform. In other words, marketing messages and videos will be muted, if seen at all. While that is a possible outcome, I don’t think that’s where Facebook is headed. Although Facebook has its challenges, Dumenco’s reasoning makes too many assumptions about how people will use this channel in the future. Back to the Future: The Content Conundrum Back in the 1980s, as cable TV expanded, everyone thought that a hundred channels was completely unnecessary, and that the content would all be terrible anyway. They were wrong because they were basing the assumptions on how people used their TVs at the time. It turns out that the cable world (as well as the digital channel world) continues to grow and produce higher-quality programming than ever before. In terms of time spent, we watch increasing amounts of both television and digital video. I don’t hear any more talk about cable or broadcast TV having too many channels and too much bad content. Those claims have moved to the digital channels, which include Facebook, YouTube, and other social and video platforms. Which brings me back to Demenco’s assumption that the only change in Facebook will be an increase in content volume. Below I address some behavioral changes, but either way, I think we can handle digital content just as we have learned on TV. From user-generated video to professionally produced series, onsumers and technologists will find ways to parse it out, to modify the experience and the discovery, to learn to sort so as to satisfy their interests and needs. From a marketer’s perspective, the added volume of content on cable TV allowed brands to evolve beyond traditional sponsorships going back to the future to integrate into content, create it themselves, republish and curate. These tools abound on both television and in digital channels, and they continue experimentation and change on Facebook. Content volume on Facebook, in all likelihood, will evolve as it did on cable and broadcast. There will be less of what people don’t like and more of what they do like. To the extent brands can deliver messages and videos that people like, and are interested in, they can use that channel to market with their own content. Other brands may simply be using it as an advertising platform. The “Law” is Static; People Are Not Part of the reason we can handle the content on Facebook is that the quality and experience won’t be static. Dumenco writes about cringe-worthy oversharing, persistent tattletales, etc. Brands already take care, for the most part, to curate the experience and content they provide on Facebook and other channels. People do the same thing. They create a vision of how they want to be perceived on the channel in just the same ways that brands do. This means that oversharing will be self-monitored and monitored by your friends (Hey, I’m dumping you if you post one more cat video). Consumers are the curators -- of themselves and their friend’s content. Will we still see cringe-worthy videos? Yes, but we’ll leach earn to curate those. The idea that we won’t be able to watch all the videos or read all the posts available on our newsfeed assumes no changes in the type of content or our behaviors. It also doesn’t recognize that these messages replace other forms of communication such as email, text, chat, phone and other social catch-up behavior. This content now can be sorted, and begins to take on higher utility functions. I know that a single person is not a statistically relevant user pool, and I freely admit, it’s probably worse if the single person is just me. But, as an individual user, I like Facebook and as a marketer, I like its utility and platform. Most people that I know assume everyone is on Facebook -- it’s pretty much a surprise if they’re not. Half of the U.S. population is a member. There are over 550 million unique users each month, worldwide. With those statistics, seriously, we’re worried that this isn’t a good advertising or marketing channel?
The rise of social media has forever altered the way people and businesses communicate. The explosion of social has been tremendous, as Facebook closes in on one billion consumers and Twitter approaches 200 million, not to mention emerging platforms like Google+, Instagram and Pinterest. The value of the social web for brands and other organizations is the idea of adding another channel to reach audiences through paid, owned and earned media. Twitter and Facebook Pages are today what websites were in the Nineties … if you don’t have one, you don’t even exist. And with that thought comes a bevy of opportunities for brands to access another medium to reach their digital audiences—only this “medium” allows for consumers and brands to interact and engage in two-way, personal relationships. That’s something no other marketing channel before has allowed. We want people talking about and interacting with our brand. Social is great for that, and marketers have led the charge with social. But why let this medium that’s perfect for managing one-on-one relationships be confined to those heading up the marketing department? Social’s unique functionality lies in its ability to give consumers a voice and equal footing with brands. It’s not a one-off campaign or “push” marketing channel; it’s a two-way conversation platform that gives consumers the power and ability to be heard, answered and engaged. That is extremely powerful for brands if harnessed and used correctly. And this applies across the entire consumer experience—not just marketing. It’s an excellent customer relationship tool. No question, social is an invaluable platform for brands. I’ve been preaching that message since 2006 – and I have yet to tire out. Hundreds of brand marketers “get it” and have already seen ROI from marketing efforts. Because of this, however, social has commonly become something that is bound by the limits of marketing departments. However, if that’s the approach, are you really getting the full ROI from your efforts? Think about it: companies invest time, resources and staff to manage their presence on the social web, building one-on-one relationships with their social audience in hopes that they’ll turn into brand loyalists or even promote their brand via word-of-mouth or other type of share. The beauty of it all is that social should be something that breaks down the silos within organizations, providing solutions to maximize ROI across several different departments and across all consumer touch-points. Understanding the benefits of leveraging social as a CRM tool just might open some doors for sales, customer service departments and beyond. Using Twitter as a customer service channel is probably one of the most obvious use cases. Intuit, for example, uses their Twitter handle @teamturbotax to support customers for tech and tax help. A consumer tweeted before last year’s April tax deadline “just failed MISERABLY at http://turbotax.com ... better luck next year” and @TeamTurboTax immediately responded in real-time: “Hi. Saw your tweet. What’s happening? We are here to help, just let us know.” Talk about top-notch, timely and personal customer service. The social web also offers sales forces the ability to manage their own relationships as well. State Farm allows each agent to have their own branded Facebook Page to manage their specific relationships with their clients. This is the dream: managing one-on-one relationships, at scale … and the social web makes it possible. Are you knocking on your marketing departments door yet? Furthermore, social brings companies a new wave of data. From simple demographic information to understanding engagement and share frequencies, trends in specific locations or times of day – all of this can be gold to someone who touches CRM. While there is no question that this information is of value to the marketing department, it’s clearly possible that it could also be of use across the enterprise. We need to think about the way we view social. Understanding that social is not just a marketing tool is vital to those with the keys to the system so they can offer access to benefit the greater organization. Social as its own medium can be even stronger – providing even more value to an organization – if it’s used in all of these capacities. Department initiatives can be intertwined to create an even better brand experience across the social web and at all consumer touch-points.
News Flash: Facebook marketing works! Just ask Marc Pritchard, Procter & Gamble’s global brand building officer (love the title!), who just told a rival publication that Facebook (and Yahoo) were “fundamental” in an interview about the company’s ubiquitous “Thank You, Mom” Olympic campaign. Indeed, P&G’s tactical approach to this effort is worth reading about. The company launched some of its content all the way back in mid-April, it did -- oh, the synergy! -- Interesting iterations of what Pritchard says was a strategy to create “a perfect storm” surrounding the campaign. Describing a marketing moment during a Misty May-Treanor/Kerri Walsh beach volleyball match, the story explains: “NBC aired a ‘Thank you, Mom’ segment where Ms. Walsh praised her mother, which was followed by an ad from Pampers (Ms. Walsh's sponsor) and then a P&G ad. Meanwhile, Facebook posts and tweets were being fired out to cheer them on.” Nifty execution, eh? But wait, there’s more! This effort to use the Olympics as a marketing platform -- Pritchard says P&G could realize $500 million in sales from it -- would be nothing without a strong idea executed with boatloads of relevant content, no matter how good P&G’s tactical skills are. Yes, even when all these tools are available, ideas count. Part of the beauty of “Thank You, Mom” is its resonance. Every mom can relate to those moms of Olympians in the stands, be it because they’ve also spent hours upon hours in windowless, chlorine-saturated rooms all for a 30-second swim race, had their car reek from the sweat of pubescent soccer players, or, in a variant on parental sacrifice, indulged their son’s fascination with reptiles by allowing a dozen snakes live alongside the humans in the family abode. (See: my mom.) When you see those moms, you know some of what they went through – not to mention that it’s refreshing to see moms revered the way that they so often aren’t. The campaign is also highly aspirational. Don’t all of us sometimes entertain the fantasy of being Debbie Phelps, mother of the greatest Olympian ever? (And, no, not just because of the sponsorship dollars.) But, back to Facebook. A while back, before former CMO Joel Ewanick parted ways with General Motors -- but after he decided GM wouldn’t part with any more money on Facebook -- I couldn’t help but wonder if one reason GM didn’t like Facebook is that it didn’t have strong enough content to support its investment. Yes, that is speculation, but, presumably, if its ads on Facebook were doing so wonderfully, it would have found money to spend there. Allegedly, the brouhaha busted out because GM wanted to do something big, and splashy –- which Facebook wouldn’t permit – but big and splashy doesn’t equal resonant. The challenge is that tools like Facebook’s Reach Generator – and big, splashy ads -- are just tactics to get a message out in front of an audience; the only ways that paid media social tactics end up being worth more than the initial investment are through engagement and social distribution. I by no means have a window into everything P&G has done with this campaign, but I do know this: the domestic “Thank You, Mom” page -- one of 29 country-specific “Thank You, Mom” pages -- has 750,000 “Likes.” Perhaps more importantly, as of this afternoon, more than 300,000 people were listed on the U.S. page as “talking about this. So, to conclude, Facebook marketing works. The problem is, when it does, it’s not just about the reach of the platform.