executive strategy: social media marketing

Executive Strategy:Social Media Marketing

Andrew Krebs-SmithVice President, Founder

Social Fulcrum

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Scott Pilgrim T-Shirts

• 12,000 Facebook Fans

• 2,000 Twitter Followers

• People begging for product before it was even manufactured

• Budget: $500 + Time


Warman Homecare

• 3 Facebook Fans

• Budget: $3,000/month


The Difference

• Research

• Strategy

• Adjustments


Goals for today

• Quick Social Media/WOM 101

• Review Materials

• Emphasize measurement

• Show innovative/strategic uses of social media

• Show process and metrics


Short Personal Chronology

• Facebook launched the year I was a Freshman in College

• Graduated from Loyola in 2007

• Advertising, Public Relations, Marketing

• First job in Word of Mouth Marketing at advertising agency

• Laid off - started consulting

• Director of Word of Mouth Marketing

• In 18 months: Grew dept from one person experiment to 15% of agency revenue, 1/3 of agency personnel, 25% of agency profits

• Recently started my own marketing company in New York


Wide range of experience

• Pfizer

• Texas Instruments

• Ocean City

• Slacker Hero

• Robert Andrew Salon

• Strayer University

• National Chicken Council

• Chesapeake Bay Trust

• Bayer

• Meritain

• CMD Outsourcing

• Warman

• Zoysia Farm Nurseries

• Severn Savings Bank

• Bozzuto Group

• Mariner Bay

• Roseda Beef

• Patrice and Associates

• Carol for a Cause

• Baltimore Convention and Visitors Association

• Designer Chatter

• Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard

• Prometric

• Prometrics

• 7 Oil Co.

• Television News Center

• Robroy & Co

• NSI Partners

• Rosenthal Partners

• Alexander + Tom

• MGH

• The Cyphers Agency

• American Chemistry Council

• American Nurses Credentialing Center

• American Nurses Association

• Forge Academy of Strength Training

• Frederick Ward and Associates


WOM concepts

• Credible

• Consumer vs. Company

• Interactive

• Glazed eyeballs vs. targeted interactive

• Exponential

• It’s cheaper to have 1,000 people tell 10 people than to reach 10,000 people


Old Spice• 40 Million views within 4 days of YouTube

campaign


United Breaks Guitars


More than just Facebook and Twitter

• Social Networks (FB, Twitter, Linkedin)

• Huge audiences, lots of opportunities

• Review Sites (Yelp, Tripadvisor, RateMyProfessor)

• Where negative sentiment lives

• Online Forums (NASIOC, CityData)

• Niche communities

• Insight into consumer perceptions, habits, motivations

• Sometimes not accessible by search engines

• Q&A Sites (Yahoo Questions)

• Public medium, well-optimized

• Social Bookmarking (stumbleupon, del.icio.us)

• SEO

• Social Voting (digg, Reddit)

• Traffic drivers

• Influencers

• Media Networks (YouTube, Flickr)

• Awareness, visibility, SEO


More than just promotion

• Advertising

• Search Engine Optimization

• Being more visible

• Negative sentiment

• Public Relations

• Crisis hedging/management

• Market Research

• Customer Service

• Comcast, Strayer University

• Sales, Lead Generation

• Self-identified prospects

• High conversion rates

• “Pull” strategy to get in front of decision makers


Social Media ROI

• What were your impressions?

• What was illuminating?

• What did you disagree with?


One Critique

• Only focuses on one strategy

• Produce content, build audience


Main Points

• Think more broadly about “costs” and/or “return”

• ROI can only be used in certain instances

• Results can always be measured


Main Points

• Internet Ad spend out of line with time spent

• Under-monetized Facebook Advertising


Different B2B Uses

• Sales Outreach

• Business intelligence “ammo” for sales team

• Credibility and positioning for thought leadership

• Training more employees to spread company message and thus increase awareness

• Service offering in certain cases (consulting, marketing, training services, etc.)


B2B “Wellness” Case

CHALLENGE:

• Wellness company offering $100M-$500M companies programs to decrease health insurance costs

• Needed to reach C-Level executives


IMPLEMENTATION:

• Built LinkedIn profile

• Used list of 50 prospects to build our network

• Connected with anyone that would get us closer to the 50 prospects

• Sent message to all 50 prospects

• Messaging was custom to each prospect

RESULTS:

• 80% delivery rate

• 25% looked at white paper

• 3 Leads (meetings)

B2B “Wellness” Case


Different B2B Uses

• Sales Outreach

• Business intelligence “ammo” for sales team

• Credibility and positioning for thought leadership

• Training more employees to spread company message and thus increase awareness

• Service offering in certain cases (consulting, marketing, training services, etc.)


B2B Measurement

• Company that outsources customer service for higher education (financial aid dept, registration, etc.)

• Initially hired me to research list of 50 prospects so we could write about the issues they were discussing via social media

• Not research-based strategy


B2B Measurement• I looked into customer sentiment at target list of

prospect schools

• Found “ammo” for their sales team - negative comments about financial aid departments, registration depts, etc.

• Instead of “Hi, I think our services might be useful,” they now say “We know you have a problem. You’ve had 7 negative comments about your registration dept this month. Let us help solve the problem and save you money in the process.”


Usual Drivers• Specific Problem

• Negative reviews

• Specific Objective

• Increased sales

• Positioning

• Our competition is doing it

• “shiny object”

• Everyone says this is important

• Curious re: New Opportunities


Stages of social media awareness

• Another flash in the pan

• Maybe for them, not for us

• Our competition is doing something, why aren’t we?

• Let’s build a Facebook/ Twitter Page


But Ideally...

• Don’t jump into things

• Let’s figure this out ourselves

• What is the situation? Research.

• Create a plan. Create a team. Create goals.

• Adjust, measure, repeat.


Measurement

• Every campaign should start with measurement of some kind, whether anecdotal or quantitative.

• Many tools available for $1,000 / month

• Don’t take results at face value. Dig, filter, be critical. You will emerge with a holistic view of the situation.


Power of LinkedIn


Robert Andrew Salon and Spa

• Situation: Negative reviews, first page Google results

• Solution: Positive Reviews via ambassador program

• ROI untrackable, but undeniably effective

• How much would you pay to correct a similar issue?


NCC Situation

• NCC Marketing Budget decreased to $50,000 over the last 10 years

• Less members, less dues

• Food pages dissapearing


National Chicken Council

• Goals

• Build relationships directly with consumers

• Public relations to promote chicken

• Crisis communications planning

• Objectives

• Garner 1,000,000 recipe impressions

• Create relationships with 5 prominent food/chicken bloggers

• Create active Facebook community of 10,000+ members

• Increase website traffic


Strategy• Gather audience of evangelists

• Leverage recipe value combined with individual response value

• Find online influencers, build relationships

• Offer value, leverage as needed


Implementation• Simple, effective, long-term Facebook Fan Page ad

• Respond to large volume of people tweeting about:

• Recipes for dinner/lunch

• Other ways to cook chicken

• Create relationships with food bloggers

• We offered to promote their blog on Facebook page

• Send bloggers “chicken gear”


Other...• Chicken Video Contest

• Promoted by entrants


Results (12 months)• 30,000+ Facebook fans

• 500+ recipes distributed directly to people asking for recipes

• 20+ Blogger relationships


The Shrimp IndustryWished it had a Facebook page with 30,000 fans


How we did it

• Strategic, planned usage

• Facebook - gather audience

• Twitter - build relationships

• Bloggers - build relationships

• Contest - exponential awareness

• Adjustments based on data

• What data?


Metrics

• Depend on each campaign


Report Template

• Level 1 - Impressions

• Level 2 - Audience

• Level 3 - Interaction

• Level 4 - Site Traffic

• Level 5 - Sales (or lead conversion)


Examples


If you are going to use Social Media...

• Research is a valuable investment

• Set Goals, Objectives, Strategy

• Measure


Here’s what I do when someone says “I want social media” or “I have a

specific problem”• Find out what’s being said

• About Industry

• By Competitors

• By Customers

• By Audiences

• By Employees/Company

• What are possible assets?

• Where are target audiences?

• What is the budget?

• What are the goals and objectives? How can we measure them?

• Are there influencers?

• Act like a consumer. Perform a google search


What should you look for?

• Influencers

• Bloggers

• Twitter users

• Communities

• Online Forums

• Industry-specific communities

• Demographic-specific communities

• Interest-based communities

• Targeting

• Facebook Ads

• Meetup

• Consumer Experience

• What comes up in a search?

• Reviews?

• Directories, local lists

• Search engine optimization


Then I look at specific locations

FacebookTwitterMeetupBlogs

ForumsNing

Q&A Sites

LinkedInFlickr

YouTubeSlideShare

Review SitesEvent SitesExaminer


And I use that to develop an “Online SWOT”• Strengths

• Innovative use (e.g. Comcast)

• Social-savvy target audience

• Weaknesses

• Strict regulations (e.g. pharma, banking)

• Opportunities

• Lots of positive discussions regarding product/brand/industry

• Easily reachable communities

• Threats

• Political implications

• Negative sentiment

• Bad customer experiences


Why SM might make sense for your company

• Big marketing pieces already in place

• Available resources (time, people, money, partnerships)


My two cents

• There are opportunities in social media for every company

• There are opportunities in word of mouth marketing without using social media

• Just because there are opportunities doesn’t mean you should spend money there

• Social Media can be used for more than just promotion, and more than just marketing (but it’s usually marketing in some form because it’s all public)


Two more cents• Building “social” real estate (or communities) takes time

• Return is not immediate, nor linear

• Implementation/management usually works best internally for larger companies

• Usually the cost of measuring ROI dissuades companies from measuring it

• Spend money at the beginning to determine (1) if there are opportunities and (2) if so what is the situation/strategy? Alot of companies want ROI from the outset, and don’t want to pay to “figure things out”.


Main tenets of social media strategy

• Find your audience

• Align strategy with your brand

• Create objectives

• Measure results

• Adjust based on metrics


For more information

• Read December Harvard Business Review

• Read Mashable (blog)

• WOMMA.org

• [email protected]


mailto:[email protected]


Questions?


The End

Thanks!

[email protected]




executive strategy: social media marketing

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