Trends in Social Media Sales and Marketing from Webtrends Engage

 I am attending the Webtrends Engage 2010 event in New Orleans. This city is Saints crazy and even the airport checkin screen display Saints signs when not in use for flight status as you can see on the right. Yesterday afternoon I sat in on a session on How to Turn Blogs and Other Social Media into Revenue Builders. Here is an excerpt form the session description: This session will examine the ways that companies are converting social interactions into dollars, the future opportunities for weaving social media and commerce, and the secret ingredient that makes it possible (i.e. analytics).

The speakers were Neil Lynch, Technology Manager for Alliances at ATG and Matthew Ball, Principal Consultant – Digital Marketing Optimization.

The session started with the observation that In 2010 1.4 Billion will be spent on social media marketing but most firms are not looking into ROI are really have a strategy to guide what they are doing. It is important to know why you are doing it, what is the social media spend versus your overall market budget. You also need to answer such questions as: is it for customer acquisition or retention.

Often social media marketing is given to the most junior person in the marketing department since they must know about Facebook. This is not a good idea. You need to have a consistent strategy and analytics across channels. You need to determine your time horizon. Often senior executives have a simplified expectation such as a certain number of followers by a certain date.  

Neil presented a number of models on how to use social media with examples.

The first was site centric – discussion boards. These have been for a long time and are used to build communities to interact with others of interests related to the product. Firms often do not know if these interactions lead to a transaction. It is best to try to document the transactions connections online by direct user input from customers.  Nike Plus is an example.

Next, Neil covered site centric – ratings and reviews.  Office Depot was given as an example. He said that this is one of the best social media approaches. It often works. People trust others more than the company, just be careful not to game it as this will be detected. One study found that just having a rating capability on a Web site increases revenue by 15%. Firms are also adding the adding the ability to broadcast ratings and reviews outside their sites through Facebook and other social networking sites.

The movement from social sites to commerce sites was covered next.  DSW was the example. You can share products on social networking sites like Facebook and then drive people to your commerce site. This is likely the most common way to tie these sites together. It is straight forward to manage and measure. Some one pointed out that you need to be careful if you have bloggers and Twitterers promoting your products as these activities are governed by the FTC ruling on disclosure of compensation. The challenge here is the notion of trust could be compromised if there is a compensation disclosure.

Inline purchasing was covered next. Neil said it is not quite social but related. Travelocity was given as one example. You can purchase something through an ad.  Facebook does not allow this but in other places the ad becomes a transaction point.

There is also inline purchasing where you make a purchase through a Facebook stream from a fan page without leaving fFacebook. This is expanding and The Limited was given as an example.

Sponsored game applications are also being used. The Lady Gag Karoke application was offered as an example. They have a recurring purchase model as they release new songs on a continuing basis and charge for the new songs. You can share your karoke efforts with others and this leads to ongoing use.

There is also mobile commerce. The Tommy Hilfinger iPhone app was shown.  This is trend is exploding. You can complete an entire purchase on your phone through an iPhone app. The Tommy Hilfinger app makes use of all the iPhone features. It is not just a Web app ported to the iPhone.   

I can imagine that this is just the beginning of social media sales and marketing.  Here is a post script. I want to thank Webtrends for putting on  a great event and for their choice of cities. I hear they have another good spot for next year. If you were not able to make it down, come to New orleans soon. The great food and music is flowing. here is a taste. On the left is shrimp and grits at Surrey's Juice Bar on Magazine Street and on the right is Walter Wolfman Washington at d.b.a on frenchman Street.

  
 
 

Comments

[JWilfong]

Totally agree that the most junior marketer should not have the design chair. As a Gen Yer, I know that I have many experiences in technology and grew up with it. However, the language of marketing is very sophisticated and just because someone is familiar with a tool does not mean they really know it. I would want to be part of a diverse panel of experts in designing any social media campaign. For instance, my background is in psychology, tech, and organization development. I would want to throw in a CTO, someone from IT, a business analyst, marketing experts, and HR people before rolling out anything!