There have been high hopes for e-commerce on social platforms almost since the beginning. For instance, I wrote about pop-up stores on Facebook a couple of years ago. There are current uses of the pop-up store, but they all seem to be classified as retail events.
What is the state of actual social commerce? One prediction, captured in an infographic, seems to extrapolate the reach of social platforms to an estimate “50% of Web Sales to Occur Via Social Media by 2015.” Given what we can see in mid-2013 that seems to be a wildly over-optimistic prediction.
Here are some recent developments and announcements:
• In January Facebook announced that Stipple technology would be available to create interactive images on posts and in ads. Stipple technology is similar to Thinglink, which I tried out in a post a few months ago. I repeat my warning that you must own the image in order to lawfully use it for this purpose. (Note: Thinglink was added to the mix in April).
• Pinterest continues its rapid growth. I read one article that called it a “virtual shopping mall.” Since it is easy to use it is especially attractive to small business. Much evidence suggests it is very effective in driving traffic to retail sites.
• Perhaps piggy-backing on the success of Pinterest are other visual sites. Some that are drawing considerable investor interest are:
- Polyvore is touted as a “social discovery” site where fashion shoppers create and share sets of images. It is experiencing rapid growth and is reported to have a higher conversion rate from referrals than Pinterest.
- The Hunt which allows members to post images of items they like and ask other members to help them locate the items at retail. Its current revenue model is not clear.
- Wanelo “Want, Need, Love” is another visual site in which users create their own feed based on products they like. The site appears to be driving traffic to retail sites. Whether affiliate revenue is sufficient to sustain the site or whether it can develop as an actual e-commerce site is still an open question.
These sites have one thing in common. They are currently being used to drive traffic to retail sites, not as e-commerce platforms. That is probably positive for ad revenue; e-commerce is still arguable.
A newcomer that is clearly a social e-commerce platform is Chirpify. It describes itself as the only in-stream social commerce site. According to Chirpify, users can buy, sell, or fundraise on the site. They accept PayPal as well as a variety of credit cards, but I wonder if others will be concerned about the security of transactions.
It is clearly a hot space! Existing and new platforms are likely to continue driving a growing amount of traffic to e-commerce retail sites. However, actual e-commerce on social platforms doesn’t appear to be anywhere close to 50% of web sales, nor does it appear that it will approach that by 2015!
Showing posts with label social media marketing strategy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media marketing strategy. Show all posts
Friday, April 19, 2013
Friday, April 5, 2013
Is Social Media Key to Customer Experience?
What is a definition of customer experience that marketers can use as a guide? There are a lot of formal definitions, but I like what GM VP Alicia Boler-Davis said last year. She explained that GM has expanded its definition:
to include what happens before, during, and after the sale – instead of just what happens in the dealership.
“We’re no longer thinking about a vehicle sale as a transaction or a singular event. . . We’re thinking about it as part of a relationship between the customer, the dealer, and GM.
“Put another way, the customer experience begins long before our products make it to the dealer showroom. It begins with our very decision to build a vehicle… and involves every customer touch point after that. It involves the entire enterprise.”
Ok, that’s not a new concept; relationship marketers have been preaching it for years. But it is incredibly challenging in the face of today’s myriad—and growing--number of customer touchpoints. Social media marketers know well that the content in many of the social touchpoints is controlled by customers, not by marketers, and that complicates the situation.
The PWC graphic illustrates just how hard it is. Their Digital IQ survey revealed that 66% of US online adults use social media; 59% of respondent companies have provided mobile tools for their employees, but only 37% (30% of top performers) make use of external social media communities. Businesses are far behind their customers in the use of social media, which isn’t exactly news!
Here’s a Forrester graph that makes the role of social media clear—and more than a little scary! Above the dotted line in this customer experience journey map the Forrester team shows many customer touchpoints—you can think about what they are for your business. Some touchpoints make the customer happy, others do not. Already the customer experience is not “seamlessly satisfying”—the marketer’s ultimate goal. The unhappy customer doesn’t leave it here, as so often happens these days. She tweets out her frustration.
Below the dotted line we see that the only internal process visible to this customer is social media! And one can intuit that the social media team does not have the skills, or even more likely, the organizational power to tweet back in a manner that satisfies the customer’s complaint. The customer’s problem has not been resolved by the channel she chose to use—social media.
What does it take to develop a customer experience strategy that results in seamless satisfaction? A Forrester blog post lists six necessary elements:
Strategy. Forrester says:
The strategy discipline is your game plan. It's a set of practices for crafting a customer experience strategy, aligning it with the company's overall strategy and brand attributes, and then sharing that strategy with employees to guide decision-making and prioritization across the organization. . .The customer experience strategy defines the intended experience.
Customer Understanding. Need we say more? Understanding the customer is the marketer’s basic job description. To what extent are your customers using social and mobile media? How is this affecting their search behavior, their shopping behavior and their purchasing?
Design. Whether it’s a wonderful product or whether it’s a website that not only looks pretty but works well, good design is important in an age that seems increasingly visual. Think again about the statement from GM, above.
Measurement. Don’t all digital marketers preach the importance of measurement? I still like the old quality management phrase, “what gets measured gets managed.”
Governance. Business policies must focus on customer satisfaction and lead to the internal policies that create it. Creating good customer experience is a job for all employees at all times!
Culture. Good governance leads to a culture of openness and transparency that creates an environment in which customer centricity can flourish. That just happens to be the same type of culture that encourages successful use of social media.
So I repeat my initial argument: customer experience strategy should be the cornerstone of marketing strategy. These 6 elements, however, make it clear that the organization as a whole is the player in customer experience with social media able to play a key customer-facing role. So marketing needs support from the top levels of management if it is to execute a meaningful customer experience strategy.
Friday, March 22, 2013
The Migration to Mobile III--All Shopping Can Be Local
It used to be a sign that you were cool with current technology; you did research on your computer before heading to retail stores to shop. That’s no longer true. Now shoppers can use their smartphones or tablets to get the information they are looking for right at the POP--and maybe a coupon to boot! That is a powerful concept and it is driving profound changes that go all the way down to the individual retail location.
It doesn’t start when the shopper nears the store or walks in the door, though. It starts by building a meaningful SoLoMo strategy. One interpretation of the mobile shopping funnel captures the essence.
Social marketing helps build—or maybe for the small local retailer builds all by itself— awareness and a positive brand image. Retailers use tactics ranging from paid advertising to instore promotions and events to lure followers to their social platforms. Mobile marketing—whether paid ads or content marketing—reaches people when they are actively researching a purchase or provides a triggering cue by suggesting a reason to purchase. Local marketing reaches them at the point of purchase, giving them compelling reasons to buy at that moment.
Adding another dimension to that argument is data about the role of various types of shopping apps during the 2012 holiday season. The huge growth is seen in retailer apps and the lowest growth in the daily deals apps, whose difficulties have been much in the news. I wrote about the Macy’s shopping app during the holidays. The mapping application still seems to be available only for the Herald Square store but deals, wish lists and other retail services are going strong. At the moment they are offering me a 20% off promo code, which might be useful, and a bridal registry, which definitely is not! My initial reaction was “so much for personalization,” but how do they find out unless they ask?
The data also highlights another important mobile issue. Price comparison apps also experienced explosive growth. Showrooming—checking prices in stores then buying more cheaply online—seems to be ongoing.
But there’s good reason for local retailers not to hit the panic button. The trend can be their friend! No less a retailer than Walmart is encouraging people to use their phones in stores. Wired explains it well:
Walmart’s stores are “geo-fenced,” which means the location-aware app enters “store mode” when you walk through the door. Once in store mode, you have access to an interactive version of the weekly on-sale circular for that store. You can see what’s new in the store. You can scan bar codes with the phone’s camera for prices and keep a running list of everything you’re buying so you’ll know the total cost when you get to the register.
How can retailers without Walmart-level resources turn showrooming to their advantage? The advice from the Retail Customer Experience site is:
1. Embrace omnichannel.
2. Bring the best of online shopping into the store.
3. Implement innovative in-store technologies.
4. Empower in-store personnel.
Putting it all together they say:
Innovative in-store technologies can help shoppers engage with brands and create a great, enjoyable shopping experience that leads them to both return to the store and to act as brand ambassadors through social media, leading to more visits from their peers.
Very interesting—it all comes full circle. Use both the human touch of your store employees and the power of technology to give your customers a great shopping experience and they will share it with their friends on social media. Like all good advice, it’s easier said than done, but the guidelines are there!
It doesn’t start when the shopper nears the store or walks in the door, though. It starts by building a meaningful SoLoMo strategy. One interpretation of the mobile shopping funnel captures the essence.
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Social marketing helps build—or maybe for the small local retailer builds all by itself— awareness and a positive brand image. Retailers use tactics ranging from paid advertising to instore promotions and events to lure followers to their social platforms. Mobile marketing—whether paid ads or content marketing—reaches people when they are actively researching a purchase or provides a triggering cue by suggesting a reason to purchase. Local marketing reaches them at the point of purchase, giving them compelling reasons to buy at that moment.
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The data also highlights another important mobile issue. Price comparison apps also experienced explosive growth. Showrooming—checking prices in stores then buying more cheaply online—seems to be ongoing.
But there’s good reason for local retailers not to hit the panic button. The trend can be their friend! No less a retailer than Walmart is encouraging people to use their phones in stores. Wired explains it well:
Walmart’s stores are “geo-fenced,” which means the location-aware app enters “store mode” when you walk through the door. Once in store mode, you have access to an interactive version of the weekly on-sale circular for that store. You can see what’s new in the store. You can scan bar codes with the phone’s camera for prices and keep a running list of everything you’re buying so you’ll know the total cost when you get to the register.
How can retailers without Walmart-level resources turn showrooming to their advantage? The advice from the Retail Customer Experience site is:
1. Embrace omnichannel.
2. Bring the best of online shopping into the store.
3. Implement innovative in-store technologies.
4. Empower in-store personnel.
Putting it all together they say:
Innovative in-store technologies can help shoppers engage with brands and create a great, enjoyable shopping experience that leads them to both return to the store and to act as brand ambassadors through social media, leading to more visits from their peers.
Very interesting—it all comes full circle. Use both the human touch of your store employees and the power of technology to give your customers a great shopping experience and they will share it with their friends on social media. Like all good advice, it’s easier said than done, but the guidelines are there!
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
The Migration to Mobile II -- The Second Screen, or Is It the Fifth?
“Second screening” has interested me from the advent of mobile. I used to think I was too old to watch TV with a mobile device in hand—that it was just for Gen Y and below. However, now even I find myself doing it along with a lot of others—amazing!
So first the terminology. It’s not standard, but this is general usage. TV was the first screen, the desktop computer the second. The third was the cellphone (now the smart phone) with the fourth being the tablet. The Pew chart shows the increase in ownership of various mobile devices and the corresponding decline in desktop ownership.
eMarketer recently quoted data suggesting that connected cars would provide the fifth screen. That is quite a challenge for marketers and their content! I do hope, however, that cars will be driving themselves before drivers start, for example, start browsing the Internet from their car’s dashboard!
What’s important is that behavior is changing right along with ownership as I pointed out last week. It’s safe to summarize that communication is still most important but brand-related activity continues to grow. Actual shopping, not so much. However, recent Nielsen data indicates that consumers are likely to research on smart phones and purchase on tablets. So second screening is taking place even within the growing mobile shopping space.
Three recent event illustrate what is happening and how brands, teams and people can benefit. See these summary infographics:
The Summer Olympics
The Super Bowl
The Oscars
All had their own issues. Olympics social media activity was overwhelmed by viewer angst about NBC’s coverage (#NBCfail). The Super Bowl had that power outage—what else did viewers have to do except tweet about it? The Oscars have taken heat in the past for not doing a good job with social media. This year the level of social media activity was less than that of the Super Bowl and the Grammys according to Mashable.
The Grammys seem to do a consistently good job of self-promotion. Here is their advice for other event producers:
1. Be semi-obnoxious, promoting platforms and hashtags at all opportunities.
2. Tell your audience what they will get for following you on social media. In the case of the Grammys that included behind-the-scenes coverage and unique content.
3. Let your audience know you are listening. That takes a trained social media team at work during the event.
4. Spell it out. See Number 1! The Grammys used the transitions to ads to promote platforms, sites, etc. often using their celebrity presenters to do so.
5. Be active on social media during your event. More than listening, have proactive official posts and tweets to encourage engagement.
6. Think about social media long before the event. The Oscars actually did a good job of that. Consumers were fairly accurate in predicting Oscar winners.
7. Use social media to help the viewer keep up. Use captions, crawlers, etc. to list platforms and hashtags, making social engagement easier.
Whether it’s a brand-related event, a business conference, or a non-profit activity, the work it takes to integrate social media can pay off handsomely in visibility!
So first the terminology. It’s not standard, but this is general usage. TV was the first screen, the desktop computer the second. The third was the cellphone (now the smart phone) with the fourth being the tablet. The Pew chart shows the increase in ownership of various mobile devices and the corresponding decline in desktop ownership.
eMarketer recently quoted data suggesting that connected cars would provide the fifth screen. That is quite a challenge for marketers and their content! I do hope, however, that cars will be driving themselves before drivers start, for example, start browsing the Internet from their car’s dashboard!
What’s important is that behavior is changing right along with ownership as I pointed out last week. It’s safe to summarize that communication is still most important but brand-related activity continues to grow. Actual shopping, not so much. However, recent Nielsen data indicates that consumers are likely to research on smart phones and purchase on tablets. So second screening is taking place even within the growing mobile shopping space.
Three recent event illustrate what is happening and how brands, teams and people can benefit. See these summary infographics:
The Summer Olympics
The Super Bowl
The Oscars
All had their own issues. Olympics social media activity was overwhelmed by viewer angst about NBC’s coverage (#NBCfail). The Super Bowl had that power outage—what else did viewers have to do except tweet about it? The Oscars have taken heat in the past for not doing a good job with social media. This year the level of social media activity was less than that of the Super Bowl and the Grammys according to Mashable.
The Grammys seem to do a consistently good job of self-promotion. Here is their advice for other event producers:
1. Be semi-obnoxious, promoting platforms and hashtags at all opportunities.
2. Tell your audience what they will get for following you on social media. In the case of the Grammys that included behind-the-scenes coverage and unique content.
3. Let your audience know you are listening. That takes a trained social media team at work during the event.
4. Spell it out. See Number 1! The Grammys used the transitions to ads to promote platforms, sites, etc. often using their celebrity presenters to do so.
5. Be active on social media during your event. More than listening, have proactive official posts and tweets to encourage engagement.
6. Think about social media long before the event. The Oscars actually did a good job of that. Consumers were fairly accurate in predicting Oscar winners.
7. Use social media to help the viewer keep up. Use captions, crawlers, etc. to list platforms and hashtags, making social engagement easier.
Whether it’s a brand-related event, a business conference, or a non-profit activity, the work it takes to integrate social media can pay off handsomely in visibility!
Monday, February 11, 2013
What Makes a Good Social Media Team?
Nike’s announcement last month that it was bringing “all” social media activity in-house stimulated a flurry of speculation, some of it off-base. “In-house” does not necessarily equal “all”.
I participated in the attempt to integrate direct marketing into traditional marketing in the late 80s and early 90s. History is being repeated in the social media era. The direct marketing agencies I first knew were entrepreneurial. Many were subsequently acquired by general agencies as a quick way to gain direct expertise because their brand marketer clients were demanding it. As brand marketers acquired direct marketing skills many established in-house direct marketing departments. This was especially true of telephone marketing where it became an axiom that brand marketers hired service bureaus to learn the business, then brought telephone marketing in-house.
Do you see any place in that paragraph where “social” could not be substituted for “direct?” I think not, but even that covers up an important issue. Sarah Hofsterrer, CEO of digital agency 360i closes the loop. She says:
some brands will move in the direction of taking social media management in-house, but that does still leave room for the agency to consult a brand in a strategic context, even though the activation is in-house.
That mirrors perfectly what happened in direct-response marketing. Brands with in-house departments often sought the strategic advice of agencies, especially when they were launching new initiatives. Brands also recognized that agencies are mostly a variable cost while in-house units are fixed costs. Smaller companies need to be especially aware of the cost issue, but all need to strike the correct balance. Digiday has some cost estimates and other good observations from large brand marketers.
Marketing Charts quotes a survey of companies of 100+ employees that found that while 27% have a team that works exclusively on social media (most others assign SMM along with other work) only 3% outsource SMM completely which suggests that the in-house trend is in its infancy.
So if history repeats itself--as it seems to be doing--more brands will be developing substantial in-house social media marketing expertise. I recently highlighted a video from one social media team, the Mars Curiosity Rover, doing an excellent job. The three social media marketers sat around a table and had an interesting conversation. What about requirements when the social media team gets larger?
There are many lists of do’s and don’t’s but Jeremiah Owyang has a post that details not only the makeup of a social media team but gives job descriptions for each category and takes a look at social media teams by level of corporate social media maturity. You should read the entire post.
He defines the social media team as follows:
The Corporate Social Media team is business program lead by a corporate social strategist that achieves business goals using social tools by coordinating with multiple business units across the enterprise.
In that definition he gives the basic answer to my question. What makes a good social media team is not specific skills, it is strategic focus.
Are you ready for complete control over SMM? Can you demonstrate ROI and thereby justify the costs involved? Can you locate employees with the needed skills, including the ability to orchestrate social media content and response across the enterprise? And finally, is your SSMM at a level that qualifies it as a strategic activity?
The best advice is to go slow. Don’t dump your agency quickly or rudely. You are probably going to need them to help build a strategic SMM team and to back it up from time to time in the future.
In-house social media teams simply aren’t an either/or proposition!
I participated in the attempt to integrate direct marketing into traditional marketing in the late 80s and early 90s. History is being repeated in the social media era. The direct marketing agencies I first knew were entrepreneurial. Many were subsequently acquired by general agencies as a quick way to gain direct expertise because their brand marketer clients were demanding it. As brand marketers acquired direct marketing skills many established in-house direct marketing departments. This was especially true of telephone marketing where it became an axiom that brand marketers hired service bureaus to learn the business, then brought telephone marketing in-house.
Do you see any place in that paragraph where “social” could not be substituted for “direct?” I think not, but even that covers up an important issue. Sarah Hofsterrer, CEO of digital agency 360i closes the loop. She says:
some brands will move in the direction of taking social media management in-house, but that does still leave room for the agency to consult a brand in a strategic context, even though the activation is in-house.
That mirrors perfectly what happened in direct-response marketing. Brands with in-house departments often sought the strategic advice of agencies, especially when they were launching new initiatives. Brands also recognized that agencies are mostly a variable cost while in-house units are fixed costs. Smaller companies need to be especially aware of the cost issue, but all need to strike the correct balance. Digiday has some cost estimates and other good observations from large brand marketers.
Marketing Charts quotes a survey of companies of 100+ employees that found that while 27% have a team that works exclusively on social media (most others assign SMM along with other work) only 3% outsource SMM completely which suggests that the in-house trend is in its infancy.
So if history repeats itself--as it seems to be doing--more brands will be developing substantial in-house social media marketing expertise. I recently highlighted a video from one social media team, the Mars Curiosity Rover, doing an excellent job. The three social media marketers sat around a table and had an interesting conversation. What about requirements when the social media team gets larger?
He defines the social media team as follows:
The Corporate Social Media team is business program lead by a corporate social strategist that achieves business goals using social tools by coordinating with multiple business units across the enterprise.
In that definition he gives the basic answer to my question. What makes a good social media team is not specific skills, it is strategic focus.
Are you ready for complete control over SMM? Can you demonstrate ROI and thereby justify the costs involved? Can you locate employees with the needed skills, including the ability to orchestrate social media content and response across the enterprise? And finally, is your SSMM at a level that qualifies it as a strategic activity?
The best advice is to go slow. Don’t dump your agency quickly or rudely. You are probably going to need them to help build a strategic SMM team and to back it up from time to time in the future.
In-house social media teams simply aren’t an either/or proposition!
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Another Shout-Out for the Importance of CEO Social Media Engagement
A recent study by social media agency BRANDfog gives additional support to the belief that CEO social media engagement is important. The survey included employees from 800 US and UK firms of various sizes in a variety of industries. According to their press release:
• 80.6% of respondents believe that social media is an important communications channel for CEOs to engage with customers and investors
• 68.7% of respondents believe that C-suite social media engagement enhances the perception that a brand is honest and trustworthy
• 83.9% believe that CEO social media engagement is an effective tool to increase brand loyalty.
The emphasis in this passage is mine! There are a whole host of reasons why CEOs and other C-level executives are reluctant to engage in social media, but increasingly the excuses just don’t hold water. Listen to BRANDfog CEO Ann Charles:
“We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the culture of modern leadership, brought upon by social media but sustained by the strategic inventiveness of smart CEOs. . .The role of the CEO has been transformed by social media and CEOs have no choice but to become more visible, social, and accessible than ever before.”
What are some of the benefits of CEO social media engagement? They include raising the corporate brand’s profile, communicating corporate vision and mission, attracting desirable employees, increasing brand loyalty, and even increasing purchase intent. (Study pdf)
The study also speaks to the importance of social media in times of corporate crisis and the belief that CEO involvement can be helpful. That goes back to my often-repeated question: How can a CEO know how to use social media under pressure unless (s)he has experience and is comfortable with the social channels? The answer is simple; experience and comfort level is crucial.
It’s not a new message, but this study makes it clear that it’s still a hard one to get across. My personal opinion is clear. Why should customers trust a brand whose C-level executives are afraid to engage openly and transparently with them?
Increasingly the answer is: they will not trust those brands!
• 80.6% of respondents believe that social media is an important communications channel for CEOs to engage with customers and investors
• 68.7% of respondents believe that C-suite social media engagement enhances the perception that a brand is honest and trustworthy
• 83.9% believe that CEO social media engagement is an effective tool to increase brand loyalty.
The emphasis in this passage is mine! There are a whole host of reasons why CEOs and other C-level executives are reluctant to engage in social media, but increasingly the excuses just don’t hold water. Listen to BRANDfog CEO Ann Charles:
“We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the culture of modern leadership, brought upon by social media but sustained by the strategic inventiveness of smart CEOs. . .The role of the CEO has been transformed by social media and CEOs have no choice but to become more visible, social, and accessible than ever before.”
The study also speaks to the importance of social media in times of corporate crisis and the belief that CEO involvement can be helpful. That goes back to my often-repeated question: How can a CEO know how to use social media under pressure unless (s)he has experience and is comfortable with the social channels? The answer is simple; experience and comfort level is crucial.
That said, what channels are the CEOs in these companies most likely to use? The answer is no surprise—Twitter! Are they linking to more detailed corporate information? I hope so! Many also use LinkedIn; why don’t all of them have a professional presence there? Facebook is fine and corporate blogs round out the important channels. The blogs, along with the website, are where the detailed information lives; that’s where the links should go. (See the complete infographic of study data here.)
It’s not a new message, but this study makes it clear that it’s still a hard one to get across. My personal opinion is clear. Why should customers trust a brand whose C-level executives are afraid to engage openly and transparently with them?
Increasingly the answer is: they will not trust those brands!
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