Posts Tagged “Marketing”

Customers Are Smarter and Want A New Relationship | The New Economics of Business Reputation

While preparing to launch Social Business Services for B2B Sales in January 2012, I have been engaged in its Ecosystem Audit. I have plumbed online conversations about B2B Sales and Marketing adoption of social business (erstwhile social media). I have been struck by a recurring realization: a large part of Marketing and Sales as we know them is significantly out of alignment with B2B customers. Social business is permeating customer networks throughout the economy and changing customer behavior and expectations. This has created a rare opportunity for B2B marketing and sales people who understand and respond ahead of the market. If I’m right, this could be one of the most important posts you read this year.

Two quick examples of misalignment: one of Marketing’s underlying assumptions is that it is not economically feasible to have large-scale one-on-one customer conversations, so marketing must achieve scale through secondary research (and remain isolated from the customer). One of Sales’ key assumptions is that it must rely on primary one-on-one prospect/customer communications to drive value. Both of these are increasingly false, so I’ll drill down on them before offering practical recommendations for how Marketing and Sales can explore social business at a new level. Read the rest of this entry »

Fantastic Story + A Smart Business Idea

Blake Mycoskie is a gifted storyteller in his own right, and, in this South by Southwest 2011 keynote, he entertained the audience with the story of TOMS Shoes while imparting a simple but profound principle of 21st century business: discovering the meaning and potential of giving. Here are the highlights of TOMS story, which will help you appreciate the context of the blockbuster business idea.

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2011 will be remembered as the year “social media” fell by the wayside, strategy became a recognized prerequisite for serious efforts, and “social business” began displacing it in boardrooms’ mindshare. “Social media,” which usually tries to use social technologies to talk at people, has been the predominant “first use” of socialtech because marketing drives most social initiatives, and marketers “communicate,” i.e. push content, to their targets. When they “listen,” they use limited legacy processes such as focus groups, email marketing, data mining and online surveys. However, none of these scratch the real itch because they emphasize the company asking individuals structured questions; they don’t allow customer to customer interaction, which is ten times more illuminating because it is spontaneous and customer-centric.

Socialtech gets there, but marketers are ambivalent about it because it means a loss of control. And more profits and career growth for marketers, but they have to let go first. It’s a leap of faith, but imminently doable.

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This evening, I responded to a question in one of my LinkedIn executive groups in which another member asked whether social media consulting was a “real business” for which market demand was real. I always appreciate these questions when they reflect a sincere desire to get a feeling for an emerging market space. Here is how I responded, plus additional details.

A Market for Social Media Services?

Depending on how one defines “social media,” it is already a multimillion dollar consulting and services industry. Most of the players have a marketing approach in which they help their clients to create content and interact with people in major platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, MySpace, blogs and specialized social networks. Most firms focus on consumer-facing (“B2C”) scenarios because the market for business to business use of social technologies significantly lags consumer uses. The three main types of social media services providers are: Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing the Alterian 2010 series, Monte gave his impression of the profound changes in marketing Edelman sees.

• Social media is about story—and trust. Citing the Trust Barometer, he asserted that trust was at an all-time low among consumers. The 18-29 age group has more trust, but they don’t consume traditional media [maybe that's why they trust more?]
• Trust in experts is up and “people like me” down. Billiam the snowman had the highest trust according to one survey [don't know what to make of that, is he an expert? ,^) ].
• When people are facing uncertainty, they will accept a new idea as truth when they hear it from 3-5 sources on average. This gives people peripheral vision.
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At the Engaging Times Summit, Mike gave an overview of the Alterian software stack and a preview of their new platform. The key takeaway is that Alterian is not a social media company, its core competency is deep marketing data analysis. That said, their SM2 platform is one of the social media monitoring leaders [disclosure, I'm an SM2 client].

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Continuing the Alterian 2010 series, this discussion featured: Donna Rossi, Vice President, Global Customer Experience Management, Western Union; Rob Singer, Senior Vice President, CRM, Bank of the West; Geoff Sherman, Director Pricing, Promotions & Trade Funds, Walgreens; Kathy Hecht, CMO, American Greetings Interactive; Michael Fisher, Senior Vice President, Alterian.

The message of this panel was that senior marketers and brands that don’t understand and embrace the changing landscape will feel the pain. Realize that the environment is changing fast: Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing the social business Engaging Times Summit, Donna shared Western Union’s social media journey thus far and where they are going. They are still in the early stages, having been limited by regulation (in the financial services industry). Spun off from erstwhile parent First Data in 2006, Western Union has more room to maneuver, and its CEO and CMO have become social media enthusiasts. Read the rest of this entry »

At Alterian’s Social Business Engaging Times Summit, Jennifer summarized how Dave & Buster’s was beginning to see results from their social media initiatives:

• In the U.S., they have 57 stores, and each averages 40,000 sq.ft. of gaming and restaurants. July 2010 marked their first anniversary of doing social media.
• Customers are totally online, especially the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups, talking about food and entertainment; Dave & Buster’s benchmark themselves against casual dining because it has similar demographics. They go to where the customers are.
• There’s a fundamental shift (in marketing), and we have to get social media into the decision set. Facebook is the most important right now. We have a new data warehouse and customer surveys.
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Continuing the Alterian 2010 series, this discussion featured: Michael Harrison, Chief Strategy Officer, Razor; Taleen Ghazarian, SVP Strategy, Epsilon; Cristene Gonzalez-Wertz, Chief Strategist, Covalent Marketing; Don Peppers, Co-Founder, Peppers & Rogers; Jennifer DeMarco Herskind, AVP Marketing, Dave & Buster’s.

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