The New eCommerce Reality: Every Company is a Media Company

September 09, 2010

In "Every Company is a Media Company" author Tom Foremski accurately points out "When every company is a media company this changes more than just a company's PR/communications department -- it changes nearly every aspect of an organization." He adds, "'Every company is a media company' is the most important business transformation of our times because every company is affected. It is also a massive business opportunity for so many businesses."

In this week's Jack Myers Media Business Report delivered yesterday to subscribers, I shared proprietary economic insights on companies ranging from Wal-Mart and Whole Foods to Johnson & Johnson and P&G that are investing significant organizational and financial resources in building media properties. These media assets are not intended only to deliver marketing value, but to generate enhanced economic value and enhance the companies' shareholder value. While websites, mobile applications and social media are the visible tip of the iceberg for many companies' investments in media ownership, they are also developing place-based digital media and expanding their event and experiential marketing commitments, which will represent nearly $18 billion of marketers' expenditures this year.

Event and experiential marketing has traditionally been approached as a series of one-off consumer outreach initiatives by marketers. Now they are being reconsidered as renewable and sustainable media properties that can often be partially or completely self-funding.

As mobile scanning capabilities in the U.S. become as developed as they are already in several Asian and European countries, both retailers and brand marketers will invest in building direct marketing, couponing and promotional apps that are designed to drive traffic and generate real-time response. These apps will increasingly put marketers directly into the media business as they seek to generate ancillary revenues from endemic and non-endemic partners.

With consumers living in a mash up of apps, blogs, RSS feeds, links, text messages, tweets, self-generated content, social networks and location-based promotion, strong media brands will extend off the screen and page into merchandise and consumer services, while strong product and service brands will morph into media properties. Progressive media companies and marketers will become indistinguishable and undifferentiated.

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Tags: online advertising , social media , web 2.0

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Social Media and Inbound Marketing Impact on Business Strategy

August 23, 2010

The video above can appear overwelming and scary due to the rapid pace.  Change can be difficult and business is tight, but your instincts and mounting evidence tell you that figuring out the right programs for social media and web 2.0 needs to be a top priority. Forget the buzzwords and the latest tools; for many companies, sustainable competitive advantage or extinction hangs in the balance. Something is dying - traditional media and something is being born - new media.

Executives today are realizing that social media is not a fad or yet another marketing channel, but a new inbound marketing and public relations approach to filling the top of the sales funnel with new customers and responding to those customers faster, with greater transparency, and garnering greater loyalty en route.

Social media marketing is just that: marketing. Social media online communities such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are merely "touch-points" whereby you can effectively convert conversations into leads, sales and quality improvements with remarkable content and compelling calls to action.

Forget the tools and tactics for a second and take a fresh look at the strategy as part of an integrated strategic marketing plan.  Content development costs and time are the main bottleneck to finding ROI from social media campaigns.  This is where workflow automation and internet tech. are so key to business.  Overstock.com and Zappos.com understand this which is why they are winning.  Search engine marketing and social media are merging.  This is why Activate has focused on the most powerful content - video and the most scalable technology to eliminate the content bottleneck. Activate Media Group is an innovative digital media company specializing in strategic video marketing solutions. Activate’s turnkey, automated solution produces premium quality, custom product videos, manages the content delivery platform, and syndicates videos to social media video portals at the highest scale and lowest cost in history.

The unique advantage of Activate's video marketing solutions is the quality, scalability and cost efficiency of our video content coupled with its search and social media optimized workflow. Activate creates strategic advantage for clients in sales effectiveness and marketing efficiency by flipping the digital marketing advantage from media buying power to the power of the existing product portfolio.


When we truly grasp the ability to define action and measure it, we can expand the impact of new media beyond the P&L. We can adapt business processes, inspire ingenuity, and more effectively compete for the future of the fashion and apparel business.

Tags: inbound marketing , social media , social video portals , video social media

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Connecting the Dots Between Business Strategy, Social Media and ROI Measurement

March 29, 2010

Connecting the Dots Between Business Strategy, Social Media and ROI Measurement

This article was written by Bill Palmer, President of Activate Media Group and originally published by Apparal Magazine. 

click here to view the article on Apparel Magazine website.

The lady from the 1980's Wendy's commercial had it right all along, "Where's the beef?" We want Internet marketing and social networking to create business value, but approach with healthy skepticism any claims of marketing gold. More practically, we doubt that we have the right mix of budget, time, team resources, or proper metrics in place to truly leverage Web 2.0 for maximum results. We might even dismiss it completely if a meaningful ecommerce sales channel isn't currently a significant profit center.

However, we must reconsider the facts. A recent Nielsen survey showing that 82 percent of people first use search engines to research and find brands before purchase and 89 percent trust peer reviews and ratings over company ads. Traditional outbound marketing is largely broken. Maybe it's time to reconsider the approach to the overall proverbial customer conversation. Think magnet rather than bullhorn.

Social media is not a fad

Change can be difficult and business is tight, but your instincts and mounting evidence tell you that figuring out the right programs for social media and web 2.0 needs to be a top priority. Forget the buzzwords and the latest tools; for many companies, sustainable competitive advantage or extinction hangs in the balance.

Executives today are realizing that social media is not a fad or yet another marketing channel, but a new inbound marketing and public relations approach to filling the top of the sales funnel with new customers and responding to those customers faster, with greater transparency, and garnering greater loyalty en route.

Social media marketing is just that: marketing. Social media online communities such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are merely "touch-points" whereby you can effectively convert conversations into leads, sales and quality improvements with remarkable content and compelling calls to action.

Lately, you might have heard that this is the year of "social media ROI." This is not necessarily true for you and me. Maybe somebody dropped the ball at some point and let you down. If you think that social media has been a waste of time for your business, it probably has been … so far. The business case and marketing plan needs help.

Forget the tools and tactics for a second and take a fresh look at the strategy as part of an integrated strategic marketing plan. So much of the discussion around proving the ROI of social media seems to be about proving the business value of the tools or a specific site. This entire argument is displaced. It isn't about the tools. It is about the brand strategy. It's about the company's core value propositions and how that translates into growing sales and customer loyalty. The tools and tactics follow naturally from this position once the core is remembered, unlocked and activated.

Seeking measurable results

In 2010, executives are demanding budget scrutiny and real results from every expenditure. Business leaders require clarity in a time of abundant options and scarcity of experience; and rightly so. As an internet marketing consultant, I report to executives who have no desire to measure intangible credos rooted in transparency and authenticity. In the end, they simply want to optimize their return on investment by associating all marketing programs with real-world business performance metrics. Bottom line, they want measurable results -- "beef" from social media and hold the "BS."

To accomplish this, we need clear business goals and meaningful metrics based on industry best practices that generate a repeatable "pattern" for success. A one-of-a-kind dress can be beautiful, but not worth much in terms of overall revenue if it can't be duplicated.

One might think this approach a common sense no-brainer. However, elusiveness continues to prevail. According to a 2009 Mzinga & Babson executive study, more than 80 percent of professionals do not measure ROI for their company's social media programs. Granted, social metrics and their measurement techniques are relatively new, and this might account for the lag in tracking.

However, I believe this is primarily due to the process and state of how these projects are initiated and planned. Social media endeavors are usually still funded as pilot programs to steer the brand toward perceived relevance in the hopes that they demonstrate momentum and materialize rewards. Budgets are often borrowed from other divisions to fund the teams and programs led by internal champions who effectively make the case for experimentation. Where that money goes and from where it's borrowed varies by department and by company.

How the results are measured and improved upon are often a political afterthought. We all know what happens when we fail to plan – we plan to fail.

Developing a strategic social campaign

Nonetheless, this is a huge opportunity for advantage to companies who are learning to conduct social campaigns the right way - strategically planed, measured and monitored social media campaigns. Given social media's digital nature, uncovering comprehensive data to measure and track performance is easier and more real-time than ever before. Google Analytics, Omniture, Radian6 and Visible Technologies all have outstanding capabilities for tracking these performance indicators down to the nth degree of detail with actionable tools baked right in.

Optimizing your website, press releases and content distribution for maximum search, social and blog visibility to get found by more customers is also easy to accomplish on platforms such as Hubspot and Marketwire. Much of the information and tools are free, low-subscription-based, or open source. Therefore, the cost is in hiring and managing the right team. This can also be done by certified experts at low agency rates without overhead or contract risk.

This year social media graduates from experimentation to strategic implementation with direct ties to specific measurable performance indicators. Smart CMOs now require a connection between social media and P&L business goals.

My internet marketing agency conducted an analysis that looked at more than 100 case studies as well as an in-depth executive survey from MarketingSherpa involving more thatn 2,000+ marketers to identify the following best practices in measuring social media for the primary business goals of increasing revenue and reducing costs.

Each of these 11 best-of-breed metrics is placed in the context of the performance indicator it gauges (such as authority, attention or effectiveness):



When we truly grasp the ability to define action and measure it, we can expand the impact of new media beyond the P&L. We can adapt business processes, inspire ingenuity, and more effectively compete for the future of the fashion and apparel business.

Tags: apparel magazine , PR , public relations , social media , web 2.0

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Top 5 Reasons to Outsource Social Media Marketing

February 25, 2010

If you are considering outsourcing B2B social media marketing, Spurspectives has compiled a list of top benefits of outsourcing this function to a social media marketing firm. I’ve added my own commentary to the lists. If you’ve implemented a B2B social media strategy, I’d be interesting in learning more about it.

The Top Reasons to Outsource B2B Social Media Marketing Outsourcing

1. Speed:

If you are new to social media - or ready to embark on a broader social media strategy - outsourcing can get things up and running quickly.

For those CEOs and marketing executives of a certain age and background, Web 2.0 technology can seem very daunting -- they must learn new technology, new terminology, new ways to measure ROI,, new "pull" strategies, new ways to identify potential clients, and new ways to brand their product or service online. It is not very easy to master the learning curve for these activities easily. Every man-hour that you devote to learning and implementing these techniques is one less that you can spend on your core competency (whatever that may be). It is much better to outsource this marketing strategy -- at least in the beginning -- even though it may cost a little more. Since the ROI of social-media marketing is so high, it matters little whether you start the investment internally or externally.

2. Training:

An outside team can teach you how to do things, set up workable systems and schedules, and then transition some duties back to your internal team over time if that makes sense for your organization.

This is a natural result of the first point. Imagine that your company creates a social media marketing strategy -- or even a whole online-marketing department -- from scratch. You will need to determine how to judge the quality of applicants in fields that you might not know. You will need to spend time recruiting, interviewing, and hiring. You will need integrate the new employees and orient them into the company. You will need to determine the organizational structure of the team or department as well as figure out how they will work together with other teams and departments so that there will not be any overlap. It's going to be difficult to set meaningful benchmarks when everyone is starting from scratch.

Conversely, you could interview and hire a social-media consulting company in one day. You can examine their case studies and past results in a few hours. You don't need to spend HR's time. You don't need to integrate them into your company's fabric. You just assign them a task and a deadline, and they will begin working on their own. And when they are finished, you simply take their work and apply it to your operations.

3. Reach:

You will have access to the outsourced team’s existing networks, which can help your social networks grow bigger - and faster.

It is in the best-interest of a social-networking consulting company to promote your business themselves. When the consulting firm markets the services that they provided for your business, they have to mention what your company does and how great you are. By promoting you, they promote themselves! It creates something similar to what is termed the "multiplier effect" in economics -- the effect of one action snowballs as it moves through the chain of media, Internet users, businesses, and other people. The online-marketing term "viral" is simply a new word for an old idea. By outsourcing your social-media efforts, you essentially gain two online-marketing packages for the price of one.

4. Experience:

You’ll also benefit from your outsourced team’s experience with other clients. This will allow you to avoid pitfalls and learn about options and alternatives.

Odds are, a local online-marketing outsourcing company has already worked with a business like yours -- they might have even worked with one of your competitors! But do not be alarmed -- being the "first-mover" or "first-to-market" is not always an advantage. If the consulting company has already worked in your field, they likely already know, for example, which keywords, networks and platforms are best. They might also know which keywords your competitors did not use -- and, therefore, you can capitalize on that missing element. In terms of social media, the firm may already know which networks are best suited to your purpose (like, for example, Twitter rather than Facebook). The competitors in your market who were the first to use these strategies did not have this benefit -- but, if you wanted until now to venture into Web 2.0, you do!

5. Synergy:

An experienced team will be able to create an integrated system of social media tools and channels, rather than a loose patchwork, allowing you to maximize your social media “nodes” for greater impact.

6. Strategy:

An outside social media team can help you develop a strategy and keep you focused on achieving long-term goals.

The benefit of hiring a consulting firm in this context is that it can see the big picture. If you are new to social media and online marketing, it is easy to focus on the digital trees and get lost in the virtual forest. Rather, an expert, outsourcing firm can create an overall online-marketing plan -- tailored to your niche and goals -- and show you how to implement it much more quickly than you could yourself. Remember, hours can matter in the online marketplace.

A B2B consultant or outsourcer also brings value simply because of the fact that the company is independent of your organization. There is no interoffice politics, no turf warfare between departments, and no one who tells a boss simply what he wants to hear even if the employee disagrees. You pay a consultant to provide his honest, blunt advice and to help you achieve your stated goal. And that is all. This is an obvious benefit in all areas -- not only in online-marketing.

7. Branding:

You want to select a partner with marketing and design capabilities in addition to social media know-how. The right team will make sure that everything you do supports your overall marketing strategy, including branding and identity.

 

Tags: b2b , outsourcing , social media , web 2.0

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New Study: Consumers Expect Brands to Engage with Them in Social Media

October 22, 2009

New Study: Consumers Expect Brands to Engage with Them in Social Media
10.22.09 by Blake Cahill   

Well, is that really anything new? Haven’t consumers always expected attention and respect when they walked into a retail store or when they called a companies contact center? The rising chorus of social network users (4 out 5 US adults online interacted with a social site in ‘09 - Forrester) continue to up the expectation for brands and companies with respect to presence and interaction online. The 24 X 7 consumer and social technologies have enabled new-media users with an ongoing interaction cycle that necessitates attention from brands.

A new study that was just release from Cone reports that among new-media users, a staggering 78% of them interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools — up from 59% the year before. And that these users are conversing with brands more often: 37% say they interact at least once a week — which is up from one in four when Cone did the study last year.

At this point it is simply not enough to just have a social media presence (although 95% of users expect it.) Increasingly, consumers are looking for companies and brands that have Web sites (58%) and email (45%) which I find extremely low percentages by the way. But, to also have involvement in social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace (30%) and online games (24%). Additionally, despite the annoyance of pop-ups and other intrusive ad methods 43% say they want to see companies advertise online up from 25% last year.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Cone’s data, however, is that consumers strongly believe that social media is a two-way street, with 62% saying that they can influence business decisions by voicing their opinions through social channels. Additionally, about 25% have contributed their point of view on an issue or contacted a company directly (23%), and most want the conversation to be two-way — 74% expect companies to join conversations about their companies and brands.

Some of the data is inline with other studies I have seen and some of it seems a little be low. Will cross reference with earlier posts and provide updates with how this compares.

Tags: social media

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