Archive for the ‘Marketing ROI’ Category

The Revenge of the I

The Revenge of the I, an upcoming marketers’ conference this 17th October, will explore the online tools that consumers are using to make an impact on the markets that concern them.
That event is a sign of our times — the online tools that were once the creation and purview of brilliant computer nerds have been taken over by the users. Users in many cases ‘own’ the tools, in the sense that they create the content. Without users social media platforms do not exist – they lose purpose.

Consumers are using blogs, forums, microblogging (such as Twitter, Jaiku, Spoink, etc.), YouTube, social networks and search tools. The next generation of consumers will use these tools more and more. Which companies can afford to ignore that fact?
A couple of years ago, nobody considered viral marketing, Twitter campaigns, seeding programs or even having a corporate blog on the website. The situation is analogous with the early ‘90s when very few companies had company websites. Now it’s hard to imagine the world without them. The variety of social media tools to be discovered and incorporated into marketing campaigns is impressive.

However, it’s one thing to be familiar with tools and strategies; it’s an entirely different concept to use them to measure the results. If the impact of a campaign, isn’t measured, it is impossible to truly manage it.
The Revenge of the I puts a strong emphasis on the practical use of social media tools. Lots of business cases will be presented, especially case studies from early adopters – all those who went viral, measured it and are ready to share the results.

Attentio is speaking at this conference. Together with our client, advertising agency Boondoggle, we will talk about online conversations: how to listen and how to act. Our case study will be a conversational marketing campaign for Lexus.

Marketers should be aware of how social media tools are being used, by whom, and for what purposes. Whether used for killing time or for the beginning of an information insurrection, online tools have moved beyond the control of their developers and into the hands of the probing masses, the investigative individuals; into the hands of you and I.

More about the congress on the site of organizer BDMA:
http://www.bdma.be/index.php

You can still REGISTER for the Congress

Marketing and Money

Was it Milton Friedman that said that there are four types of spending?

1. Spend your money on you.

This makes the spender cautious–interested in acheiving an individual ratio of cost versus value. You want a nice car that you like to drive but that doesn’t break your budget in gas bills. This is where the consumer gets the best ROI, return on investment, because the consumer dictates the value of a purchased good or service.

2. Spend other people’s money on you.

Now the spender can be a bit less concerned with price and more concerned with quality (or status). You can blow a bit more cash on a nice car if your parents promise to cover the insurance. Not such great ROI for the spender, but a lot of fun (or at least less cost anxiety) for the person that ultimately consumes the purchase.

3. Spend your money on other people.

Do you buy Grandma a piece of jewelry or a nice sweater? What if it’s for your girlfriend? For Valentine’s Day? After a fight? The logistics involved in this question merit a certain amount of cost/value math modified for the person on whom you’re spending the money as well as the reason why. ROI can be hard to judge here. As a consumer, Grandma may get a lot more satisfaction out of a sweater than a diamond ring, but the ROI on a ring for your girlfriend may make you, the spender, happier.

4. Spend other people’s money on other people.

This is where a spender generally wastes the most money and gets the worst returns. This is why a lot of government spending is notorious-there is too much cash with not enough accountability or consumer satisfaction. If, as some studies suggest, the United States economy spends close to 11.3 billion dollars on health care yet some 47 million Americans, 16 percent of the population and growing, are uninsured and unable to access satisfactory, much less appropriate care, one has to wonder where the money is going.

Number 4 is also where marketers get stuck. They spend corporate cash on campaigns geared towards nebulous customer niches. Measuring the returns on some of this marketing can be difficult. Are consumers happier because they are consuming more? Or is a brand better off because consumers are more appreciative of the corporation’s reputation and sense of civic sponsorship? How to tell?

Measure online buzz.

Most online communities attract like-minded individuals. These communities congregate around topics, ideas, events and even brands that interest them. They talk about these initial community interests, but they also discuss other issues of importance to them.

For example, an online community built on interests in individual health and lifestyle will inevitably discuss favoured lifestyle trends and diets. Measuring and monitoring the buzz produced by these communities allows producers to anticipate the needs and desires of their customer niches. It lets them measure the possible returns on marketing before launching a campaign, identify where to launch the campaign and attract the most relevant and most reactive consumer audience. Lastly, after launching a campaign, monitoring and measuring online buzz can demonstrate how the buzz picks up and reacts to the campaign.

Listening to buzz lets a marketer know whether Grandma would buy herself a sweater if she had the cash or a diamond ring. It lets a marketer know not only whenand why the girlfriend wants the ring, but how big, how many carats, and with what setting. Online buzz puts a marketer as close to the market as s/he can be by letting the consumer dictate the best way to spend corporate cash and get real, measurable reactions (and returns) from consumers.

WOMM. Simplified.

There is a lot of WOM about WOMM these days.

A study published by JupiterResearch suggests that advertisers under-spend on social media marketing. BuzzAgent has been stung by some bloggers for its recent campaigns to “prove” how WOMM works in social media. Advertisers complain that there are too many possible social media and other types of online outlets and no proof that any of these are especially effective.

Social media marketing, online WOMM, etc. is much like any marketing concept. It is an extension, not an alternative, to traditional advertising, market research, and PR. Successful communication with clients and stakeholders, along with customer engagement is as limited in methods of communication as are its customers.

Customers, clients, and stakeholders are online, generating social media as well as other forms of online content, so advertisers and marketers are too. And determining how to listen to and engage with different groups online is as multifaceted as it is offline. Online content and strategic involvement runs the market research and advertising gamut, from online focus groups to online billboards. Social media, however, is something different.

For example:

Synthetron, a neighbour or ours, identifies stakeholders and uses online formats to create targeted stakeholder conversations around an important issue. How? Synthetron first selects stakeholders for a study. Stakeholders must have an interest and a desire to impact a certain conversation. Invitation-only online discussions are then used to create an open forum for stakeholders to dialogue. Individual stakeholders included in a study remain anonymous; their ideas and concerns do not. This sort of online stakeholder forum aggregates and evaluates relevant stakeholder WOM, rather than target individual complaints and concerns. To me, it sounds like an online focus group, one in which stakeholders are invited rather than solicited. It permits incentivized stakeholders to be heard as a group without being hurt as an individual.

BuzzAgent is criticized for soliciting content in the manner of a traditional marketing focus group. As with any solicitation, the individuals solicited do not offer their information for free. They are not concerned stakeholders but paid informants–the information that they offer is rarely given for free. These individual informants want something for their time–free samples, extra influence, or face time with an influencer. This is not a new way of collecting ideas, and it can be quite useful in understanding why people are or are not discussing a particular brand or product. Focus groups can help stimulate conversation and generate new ideas. Holding a focus group online or offline involves parallel benefits and risks. Individuals can fib in person as well as in email.

And then there’s social media. Conversation. Buzz.

Creating a WOMM campaign online is not all that different from creating a WOMM campaign offline. But the means of measuring WOM online are more exact. That’s what the Attentio software targets.

Attentio does not solicit online content. Attentio measures and monitors spontaneous buzz as it emerges online. The tools size a social media conversation and measure it in comparison with other conversations. What generates more buzz, pharmaceuticals or automotives? In which online media are cars more popular, blogs or forums? Within the automotive conversation, do people talk more about Opel or Toyota? Do they discuss car design or price more? Attentio monitors the conversation around certain topics as new government regulations are implemented or tax systems are changed or general social opinion turns from red to blue. These trends show up online in numbers that can be quantified and, with a little analysis, qualified. Unsolicited, self-identified stakeholder/client/consumer/producer conversation filed and displayed for anyone interested in a particular market.

Knowing buzz numbers help a marketer—traditional, innovative, online, offline—plan an effective and efficient campaign. Knowing the buzz from social media lets a marketer know if a focus group might be useful, or a stakeholder discussion necessary, or an offline sale worthwhile. It is not a means of marketing; it’s a means of measuring the market and determining how to best engage.

Competing with traditional marketing is just not necessary

Buzz Agency is looking to compare (compete?) WOM with traditional media through a “WOM Impact Guarantee” programme. The challenge requires a 300,000 US dollar investment in both traditional and word-of-mouth media. If WOM doesn’t outbase traditional competitors across four brand metrics–brand awareness, consumer opinion, purchase intent and actual sales, BzzAgent promises to refund the marketer the full cost of the campaign.

Maybe its because we’re Brussels based–and what is the EU if not a conglomerate of co-creation and (sometimes over-extended) collaboration?–but we just don’t know if this kind of competition is necessary. WOM and traditional media complement; they don’t compete. Successful media campaigns look to integrate traditional media and word-of-mouth, not to separate or isolate the results.

We measure mainstream media trends at the same time we meausure social media trends here. Comparisons demonstrate the efficacy of both WOM and traditional campaigns, as well as where the interests of both intersect. Analysis suggests which consumer profiles finds which types of media campaign most appealing.

This is the objective of online co-creation and collaboration. Allowing PR firms to create more effective and integrated campaigns that combine both traditional and WOM. Each industry, brand, product, and service requires campaigns modeled to suit the interests of the clients and the consumers–there is no one size fits all marketing campaign.

The concept of the long tail is that more effective marketing money is spent on more receptive markets. WOM is definitely a strong aspect in this, but WOM itself is multifaceted. What creates buzz and generate conversation is never easy to predict, but with the right tools and a little time, PR Agencies use software to analyse what works for clients or consumer and what doesn’t.

A lasting market is an environment in which consumers and producers look to establish long-term relationships. A market is collaborative. Shouldn’t marketing be too?

Social Web Analytics eBook

Philip Sheldrake has written a nice guide around Social media monitoring. There is a good analysis of the industry and he also positions free tools as well as the main players in the market. It seems Attentio’s coverage of European social media is still unique. I’d like to say thanks to him for making a few last minute adjustments after I read the first version!

Nathan Gilliatt and e-consultancy are also coming out with new guides, so it is a space that is getting more attention…

“The Happening” didn’t happen

While checking out the online buzz around movies, I happended upon The Happening. This is another “epic” from Shyamalan. His great successes started with the Sixth Sense and was followed up with Unbreakable and The Village. He unfortunately is finding it hard to get the winning formula now. The Happening is universally panned, on IMDB there are one or two good critiques but there is now a planned walk out campaign in the USA and scorn heaped on the screenplay and cardboard acting.

Interestingly this movie is still bringing in great Box Office, Variety published that they brought in $40Million last week. That’s not bad for a “turkey”. It reminds me of The Simpsons which was a box office hit but of questionable quality (three episodes of The Simpsons smashed together said those in the know).

The conclusion for online buzz might be that if the studio owns a great franchise such as The Simpsons or access to a reputation like Shyamalan then a turkey (let’s call it a golden turkey) is OK so long as the movie gets mass released simultaneously, ideally globally. This is certainly what happened in the case of The Simpsons. The long term impact of that strategy is of course less clear, people can be fooled once but twice is more difficult, the franchise loses value and reputations damaged. However studio bosses are normally remunerated on the now so it unlikely they will fussy about quality if they know even a bad movie will bring in $80-$100Million. Below some simple high level scenarios.

Scenario A: studio has a great movie from an unknown franchise, they use online buzz to generate interest by early showings, select viewings, trailers and other ways to build up buzz. A critical mass of viewers goes to earliest “mass” releases and buzz both online and offline builds up and then we have good box office. This is something akin to the movie “Once” which became a word – of – mouth best seller. (Disclosure: I am Irish and I loved it).

Scenario B: studio has a great franchise or famous director, actor or producer. Clearly the movie is on the poor side “there were difficulties from the beginning”, “the movie I set out to make got hijacked” etc. The decision here is simple enough, kill it OR mass release straight away bring in the initial box office and ship to DVD 1 or 2 months quicker. At best do a global launch simultaneously and just acknowledge that the online buzz will be negative and will kill the movie quickly. E.g. The Happening

Scenario C: Great franchise, great movie would be a combination of release strategy of both A and B with significantly more speed (there is less risk of no buzz, after all there is a franchise). Push more early viewings, build up momentum with significant “viral” content released earlier and then mass release, enjoying the crescendo of buzz that will drive millions of people to the theatre. E.g. The Hulk

The Trendpedia chart below shows the buzz around The Happening and it is interesting to see the quick buzz from no-where and the quick decline. The absolute buzz is not that important compared to “The Hulk” or “Kung Fu Panda” what is more interesting is the fast decline. Still my view is that The Happening will get a spike in buzz over the next weeks but the buzz will not be flattering, walk out campaigns, cries of selling out, insulting viewers and disappointing fans, in this case a lot of buzz would not be a good thing…

Is negative WOM more meaningful than positive?

As different social media types – blogs, wikis, communities, discussion boards – become more and more popular, marketers want tools that can capture and measure buzz. Buzz numbers are the most popular metric used in that context, followed by –simply defined – influence. Share of voice expressed in the number of social media articles discussing a brand in given period of time is the measure that is used most often. It has certain advantages: it is easy to obtain using different free tools and it is straight forward to understand and cross compare with other brands. Moreover, as proven in several studies, it is highly correlated to sales for certain product categories, especially FMCG but also consumer electronics. Despite that, share of voice has low explanatory power; it delivers only quantitative information and no insights.

To gain more actionable qualitative information all social media articles can be analyzed and classified in topics they discuss regarding the brand in focus, but also in being positive, negative or neutral towards the brand. Sentiments in social media reveal how people feel about the brands and topics. There are almost always more positive than negative posts (although most posts, up to 90%, are neutral as we discovered in our studies around cars or mobile phones), but one positive post is not equal to another. They can discuss brands in general, referring to customers overall positive experience, or they describe particular products. Especially in the consumer electronic industry, general trust towards a brand is often exchanged for experience with one particular product, because users know there are significant quality differences between two diverse models of mobile phone made by the same manufacturer. Information gained from these positive posts helps to understand why a consumer chose one product over the other, even if the products are very similar.

On the other hand, there are always some negative posts. As Alain Samson notices, “even if it were the case that individual purchasing attitudes are affected more strongly by positive word of mouth, negative comments are likely to survive more easily across time and space. Negative information doesn’t only stick, it sticks longer. At the same time, bad buzz will persist longer if it is communicated to more people”. Simply, people are more likely to remember negative rather than positive messages, and they also give more weight to any negative information that they receive.

Insights that are gained from the negative articles in social media can be used for brand protection and brand reputation management. Some brands – Dell Hell being the most known one – actively monitor the blogosphere for possible negative issues and the number of brands doing so is continuously increasing; some brands could also prevent an growing issue in the past by detecting it on time and taking measures.

Positive and negative word of mouth are very important to gain good, qualitative insights regarding customer feelings, but are they equally important? Does one positive post have the same weight as a negative one? Alain Samson claims in his study, that the weight and importance of positive versus negative buzz depends on the industry. To understand which sentiment will have greater importance for a given industry, the industries must be split into high versus low commitment and high versus low choice industries. Many products, among others mobile networks, financial services or cars, are subscription products, of which mostly only one is used by a consumer for given period of time. These products tend to have fewer competitors and therefore consumer choice is limited. Entertainment industry on the other hand is an area where many products – movies, CD’s – can be used at the same time and also easily exchanged as there are many competitive products people can use.

Negative word of mouth should be more important for high commitment, low choice brands like cars. The automotive industry has high number of consumer advocates for two reasons. On one hand, it is a subscription brand, and this is a category where people – having to use one product for longer time – are compelled to be more convinced about and to which consumers are generally more committed. On the other hand, people stuck with expensive subscription products that they don’t like as much as they expected to tend to rationalize their choice anyway. People are also likely to expend more effort to find the right product if it’s a high cost subscription brand. Negative sentiment will have higher damage within these products.

For industries within which high choices exist, positive word of mouth will have more influence on the final selection. For example there are many movies that are played at the cinema and for most viewers it will be difficult to choose from 3 or more potentially good movies unless they receive recommendations about one of them. If they receive negative information about one of the movies and exclude it from their choice, there are still 2 or more options remaining so that exclusion is not the best selection process within industries with many products.

Whatever sentiment is more important, one thing is certain – sentiments in social media are extremely relevant and cannot be neglected. However, given the amount of articles posted by social media users every day, it may be very time consuming to analyze all articles about a given brand. Automatic sentiment detection is already built into Attentio’s Brand Dashboard, analyzing the sentiments in real time for our customers.

DHL experiencing social media controversy

Here’s a great story about the transport company DHL in relation to a Swedish artist (Erik Nordenenkar) claiming to have done the world’s largest drawing by putting a GPS tracker in a suitcase that DHL had to transport all over the world. In the end, the story about the DHL trip turned out to be fake. A giant YouTube viral stunt by the artist, but not necessary good publicity for DHL.

A blogger (Dan Calladine) has illustrated the story using Attentio’s Trendpedia blog search engine to show that DHL’s buzz is going “viral” all over the world right now. The blog posting is a nice example of how social media monitoring can be used by consumers as well as businesses to track buzz around certain events. Read Dan’s blog posting to get the rest of the story. This blog post illustrates the artist’s DHL viral stunt using Trendpedia. It includes the artist’s original YouTube video. Here is DHL’s buzz around the story as reported on Trendpedia. See the full drawing on Wired.

Push me, Pull U

I’ve been reading online about the importance of social media monitoring in reducing the money wasted on advertising. Mediapost had some nice things to say about the recession and companies learning to shore up their budgets by being more cautious about their marketing.

In Europe, word-of-mouth and online marketing is not only a low cost with a great many benefits, it’s the safest, most respectful way to reach clients and consumers. The EU is very protective of European consumers. “Push” advertising, in-your-face, direct-to-consumer ads, is frowned upon. For some corporations, this kind of marketing can even result in legal action.

For example, pharmaceutical corporations are very limited in the information that they can provide to consumers, and they’re even more limited in their methods of distributing this information. France has required Yahoo! to limit the information that can be accessed by French consumers to be more in line with French rules and customs. The French Parliament is now considering making encouraging anorexia a crime, and in some Southern European countries, models are already required to present health certificates to their employers. One has to wonder how this trend in consumer-citizen protection legislation will eventually affect marketing.

Online marketing, however, is saving time, money, and respect for different legal and cultural traditions by creating content that “pulls” consumers rather than push them. This, the EU and European States determine, is okay. If a consumer accesses the information rather than has it foisted on them, then everyone is happy.

Celebrity Executive Officers

Larry Ellison, the chief executive at Oracle, pulled in a cool 92 million pounds in exercised stock earnings in addition to salary last year. Howard D. Schultz, CEO of Starbucks scored a salary plus stock options that topped 50 million pounds.

AC Milan’s Kaka is expected to gross (only?) 7.5 million pounds this year, and chances are the aforementioned chief executives will be spending more time at the top of their careers than the footballer. Physical ability tends to peak at some point, while CEO salaries…don’t.

It’s a competitive corporate market, and CEOs are the new celebrities. These demigods of commerce are usually made up of a face, a known name, and a paycheck that sparks shareholder controversy.

Studies suggest that the share value of a company can be correlated to the “value” of its chief executive officer. This is part of what nailed Nardelli, the highly criticised former CEO of Home Depot. Yet despite Nardelli’s short, less than shiny record at the head of that somewhat shaky ship, the man got a sweet send-off to the tune of 210 million US dollars, over 106 million pounds. Now that is heavy censorship.

CEOs are more and more the superstar, scapegoat, and celebrity of the modern corporation. They trade in trust and infamy, linking their own reputations to the firms they represent. A lot of the value of a CEO is tied up in his visibility. One has to wonder, who’s the buzziest of the big business men, and in relation to which topics? And just how is that affecting share price? Or company brands and products?

At Attentio, measurement is underway…