How Social Media Affects the Consumer’s Decision to Buy

Posted on September 15, 2012 by Jason Sem in Corporate Social Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Retail, Return on Investment, SEO, Social Media, Social Media Consulting, Trends | Leave a comment

Google recently came out with some research called Zero Moment of Truth that very clearly and convincingly lays out the business case for social media and how it impacts the consumer’s buying journey.

Google states that the Zero Moment of Truth is the moment when a consumer picks up a laptop, mobile phone or other wired device to research a product or serve and then decide what to buy. The research shows that more and more, people are making their buying decisions well before they get to the store.

Recently, I’ve been telling anyone who will listen (ad nauseum, perhaps) that there’s been a fundamental shift in how consumers gather data and how they’re using that data to make buying decisions for products from new cars to ball point pens.

They are increasingly turning to online social interactions to check out ratings and reviews (which is a form of social sharing) for opinions on products and services and searching what a brand’s Facebook Pages or Twitter account has for deals and insights as to what’s new. They’re also using sites like YouTube and Vimeo to research how-to videos or demos on how products are used. Here’s some interesting stats that highlight this behavior:

70% of Americans now say they look at product reviews before making a purchase
79% of consumers now say they use a smartphone to help with shopping
83% of moms say they do online research after seeing TV commercials for products that interest them

All these social interactions can be quickly and easily found using search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. For a long time the conventional wisdom was that people won’t go out of their way to research things like laundry detergent and butter but in fact they do. Google’s research clearly shows they do.

The graphic below shows when those Zero Moments of Truth are happening:

Average purchase cycles for three diverse categories

If you don’t believe what Google’s saying, the Harvard Business Review came out with some research from McKinsey & Company that supports Google’s thinking. (See my recent article Consumer Decision Journey in the Digital Age) They’ve actually documented this behavior in 2009 and Google backs up their assertion that brands need to be at that digital evaluation process or Zero Moment of Truth when the consumer looks for information. If a brand isn’t showing up when consumers do their search, they are losing sales.

Where social media really makes its impact is in the advocacy phase of the consumer’s buying journey after they’ve taken advantage of a service or brought a product home and used it. If they like it (or not) they will go on Facebook, Amazon.com, Twitter, blogs, Consumer Reports, or brand website and let you know what they think. And for the first time in history, this word-of-mouth communication is being digitally archived making one person’s advocacy someone else’s Zero Moment of Truth.

I highly recommend you check out Google’s research (it’s free), watch all the videos and read it in its entirety. This Zero Moment of Truth will become, if it’s not already, the most important impetus for a customer to buy your company’s goods and/or services.

Aligning Social Media Insights with Consumer Buying Habits – CMOs Are Missing the Boat

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Jason Sem in Corporate Social Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Return on Investment, Social Media, Social Media Consulting, Trends | Leave a comment

IBM Global CMO Study

IBM has recently released their IBM Global CMO Study for 2011 and once again, social media comes up very high in what CMOs see as an area of concern for the future of their business. Other areas of concern were the data explosion, proliferation of channels and devices and shifting consumer demographics; all of which tie into social media.

The one tidbit I found most interesting in this study was CMOs are still predominantly relying on traditional sources of information such as focus groups and studies that focus on understanding markets rather than individuals. It seems that most are still ignoring what people are saying about them through social channels. Case in point:

26 percent are tracking blogs
42 percent are tracking third-party reviews
48 percent are tracking consumer reviews

In a past blog post, called Consumer Decision Journey in the Digital Age, I highlight a McKinsey & Company study that shows how more and more consumers are using these social channels to make their buying decisions. However, organizations have yet to leverage these tools which can provide crucial insights into how customers and influencers think and behave.

The graph below shows the sources of information CMOs are using to make strategic marketing decisions and as you can see most are paying more attention to markets than individuals. The key sources to understanding individuals (highlighted in yellow) still are ranked relatively low:

It’s quite obvious that CMO’s have not yet aligned their strategies with how consumers are behaving today and aren’t keeping up with the trends in technology. Therefore, I see a big role for social media going forward and the companies that embrace this trend will be well positioned to be leaders in their industries.

Selecting the Best Social Media Management System

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Jason Sem in Corporate Social Strategy, Social Media, Social Media Consulting | 3 Comments

In one of my a previous blog posts, 7 Keys to Choosing the Right Social Media Monitoring Tool, I spoke about the importance of listening tools in helping companies find relevant online conversations. This post is all about the engagement platforms or Social Media Management Systems (SMMS).

These are communication platforms where users take action and can respond, engage, interact or communicate directly on social networks, including Twitter, blogs, Facebook, forums, etc…These are real-time, highly customized dashboards and often offer multiple accounts, a shared workspace for many users and the ability to respond in multiple places with one click.

SMMS differ from social media monitoring (SMM) tools in that they are primarily where activity occurs rather where one analyzes activity. Unfortunately, there isn’t a comprehensive solution that incorporates in-depth listening capabilities with a robust engagement platform. Spredfast probably comes closest but its still has a way to go to utilize both.

Here are some key considerations when choosing your SMMS (via Socialtext)

Confidence in Adoption Rate

The phrase “build it and they will come,” usually doesn’t apply to these platforms so make sure your social media team and community managers are willing to embrace the new platform. Thus, don’t force adoption unless you receive approval from the users themselves.

It Fits the Way People Work

Make sure that your SMMS tool can be integrated with e-mil, mobile, SMM tools and other third party sites. Many times your community managers are on the front lines with customers and prospects, thus they need fast access to information and engage people.

Aggregates Sources

SMMS tools need to provide visibility to all staff and advocates involved. A user should be able to search across all the workspaces to which they belong, by key word, page title or tags. People should be able to create links that lead to pages on other workspaces or external sources. People use a variety of information sources to do their job. For example, they may use emails and calendars from Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes, lead records from Salesforce.com, documents stored on their computer, or in a system like SharePoint.

Low Cost of Ownership

Every software application requires human labor to administer and support it. The cost of the people services can be the most significant cost in the total cost of ownership calculation. According to Gartner, the cost of the people services to own and manage a licensed software application can be 4X the cost of the software license per year. Make sure your SMMS solution is simple as well as effective.

Below is a list compiled by the Altimeter Group sorted by alphabetized order by parent company, not in priority or capability. I added a few that were missing but please feel free to add.

Argyle Social: Provides features to publish and schedule, manage a social inbox, measuring tools, and white label solutions.
Awareness Networks, Social Marketing Hub an enterprise class community platform has launched their own tool that has Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and of course connect with their own community features. In particular, this is an existing enterprise class vendor (previously I’ve published thorough research report on them) which bodes well to their level of potential levels of service, support, and market viability. (they’ve briefed me)
Buddy Media: Has a set of management tools that help brands with Facebook, Twitter, and monitoring and reporting. You’ll find iterations for both brands and agencies. They have case studies from large brands and media on their site.
Constant Contact: Purchased Nutshell Mail which has keyword monitoring systems that can empower small business owners to receive alerts about their social networking accounts. On Feb 28th they acquired SCRM company Bantam Live which has some SMMS features, for sales and marketers. (hat tip to Dan Ziman)
Context Optional offers management tools for moderating Facebook pages
Conversocial: Offers solutions to help managers to plan updates and learn what type of content resonates the most with your fans and followers in social networks like Facebook and Twitter
CoTweet was recently acquired by ExactTarget. They provide Twitter integration tools, scheduling, workflow, listening tools, multiple author management, and management dashboard tools
Distributed Engagement Channel by DEC Their system offers the ability to publish content, moderate UGC submissions, and track and optimize channel performance. They also have features such as ID integration, media handling, and reporting.
Engage Sciences: Allows marketers to launch social promotions to engage customers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and corporate websites, whilst aggregating, filtering and storing streams from across the social web to allow companies to easily showcase the voices of advocates.
Expion Expion allows large Enterprises to publish and aggregate social media conversations that can scale to hundreds of local based Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and YouTube channels, etc. The tool has the ability to listen, publish, manage, respond, govern, and glean intelligence across these channels.
Hootsuite Integrates Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. Whereas before you could update Facebook and LinkedIn through Ping.fm functionality, things are different now. Facebook and LinkedIn accounts are treated similarly to Twitter accounts: you can create columns from these social networks, read your friends’ status updates, and update multiple Facebook accounts. Facebook integration offers in-line commenting.
MediaFunnel offers integration with Facebook and Twitter. They have several permission based workflows that include a variety of roles such as a contributor, administrators, publishers. This is not unlike traditional editorial processes used in CMS systems.
Moderation Marketplace Provides Social Media Management and Content Aggregation solution designed to be delivered to your clients under your brand.
Mutual Mind offers brand monitoring, permission based workflow as well as reporting tools.
Objective Marketer provides managers ability to structure their messages by campaigns, features include User Management with roles and permissions and workflows, scheduled content, integration, analytics and reporting. The tell me their current client makeup is 60% Enterprises, 30% Agencies and 10% Bloggers / Independent Consultants. (in Jan 2011, Objective Marketer was acquired by Email Vision)
Postling allows for individual clients or brand to manage assets like blog, Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account, and Flickr accounts from a single management system. There is also comment aggregation as well as workflow between teams.
Seesmic. Seesmic offers support for multiple Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Ping.fm, Foursquare and Google Buzz accounts. Also offered on iPhone, Android wp7 and Blackberry. Languages translation support includes: English, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and more. Seesmic has received investments from Salesforce and has an integrated offering with Chatter.
Shoutlet offers a multi-user application that helps global brands, small businesses, and marketing agencies build, engage, and measure all of their social media marketing communication via one platform.
SocialVolt Provides STUDIO which is a complete social media management platform that integrates all the tools a company needs to successfully engage with their clients on the social web.
SpredFast is an up and comer who recently briefed me, this Austin based company offers the core features and claims to have a 40% enterprise customer base. They have partners with Convio, Radian6, Crimson Hexagon, Sysomos, Trackkr, IBM, Porter Novelli, Sierra Club, HomeAway. They position their product as collaborative campaign management and offer features such as scheduling content, features that integrate with events and social stream like features similar to Friendfeed. (they’ve briefed me)
Sprinklr offers social media management tools, it’s interesting their website has a strong focus on listening first, before the publication.
SproutSocial is a recent low cost SMMS tool that is great for non-profits and small businesses.
Strongmail, a traditional email marketing platform offers platform that tracks the multi-stage sharing activity of the campaign all the way to conversion, analysis on reach, sharing activity, CT’s, feedback on Facebook fan page wall posts.
Syncapse (formerly SocialTalk) provides integration with Twitter, Facebook, WordPress and MoveableType, this management tool provides governance, workflow, scheduling and other features.
Vitrue: Offers social media management systems, that has integration with Facebook and Twitter, they offer scheduling features, and the ability to link multiple Facebook pages together.
Wildfire: Offers features for social sweepstakes that promote word of mouth as well as ability to manage and publish from their platform to multiple social networks, with analytics.

For an interesting take on how these companies are trying to differentiate themselves read: Social Media Management System (SMMS) Lack Differentiation in Positioning, Confusing Market.

Consumer Decision Journey in the Digital Age

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Jason Sem in Corporate Social Strategy, Return on Investment, Social Media, Social Media Consulting | 1 Comment

In the December 2010 edition of the Harvard Business Review, David C. Edelman wrote an outstanding article on social media called “Branding in the Digital Age: You’re Spending Your Money in All the Wrong Places.” He points out that today’s consumers are connecting with brands in a fundamentally new way through media channels that are beyond manufacturer’s and retailer’s control.

Then: The Funnel Metaphor

Edelman points out that for a long time marketers assumed that consumers started with a large number of potential brands in mind and methodically winnowed their choices until they would decide which one to buy. After purchase, their relationship with the brand typically focused on the use of the product or service itself.

Now: The Consumer Decision Journey

Edelman goes on to say “New research shows that rather than systematically narrowing their choices, consumers add and subtract brands from a group under consideration during an extended evaluation phase. After purchase, they often enter into an open ended relationship with the brand, sharing their experience with it online.

Click here to read the full Harvard Business Review Article article (there’s a pay wall – but it’s worth it).

Consumer Lifecycle

Jeremiah Owyang also draws attention to this new consumer lifecycle; he uses an hourglass funnel which goes into a little more detail but it’s generally the same concept as Enjoy-Advocate-Bond in the chart above.

There are many companies who have yet to build scalable social business programs so addressing these areas may still be difficult. However, once they do, they will be better able to arm not only their employees but their advocates with the knowledge and tools to help promote their brands after the point of sale.

It’s quite evident that brands need to start thinking strategically on how each of their social media channels will address these consumer touch points. Ignoring this new consumer journey means a tremendous lost opportunity.

7 Keys to Choosing the Right Social Media Monitoring Tool

Posted on April 10, 2011 by Jason Sem in Corporate Social Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Minnesota, Reputation Monitoring, Social Media, Social Media Consulting, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Social media monitoring tools are essential for companies trying to gauge online conversations pertaining to their brand(s). There are numerous platforms to choose from; with almost 200 in the market place, it’s getting difficult to select the right one.

Below are some things to consider when choosing your platform along with a list of the most-used platforms out there.

Cost
Understandably, price is usually one of the top concerns, but be sure you’re getting all that you can out of the platform. Missing important conversations because your monitoring tool doesn’t pick up a specific channel can mean lost opportunities. It doesn’t bode well to be penny wise and a pound foolish with these tools.

Range of Coverage
All platforms cover the large social channels (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn) but not all cover bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit or specific forums and chat rooms. Be sure to find out all sites covered in a platform. Here’s a list of the most important social sites out there today.

Workflow Capabilities
If you have a multitude of departments needing to monitor and engage, you better figure out how you’re going to manage all these people and sites. Marketing needs to understand what customer service is doing along with HR, public relations, c-suite, sales, etc.

Integration with Other Applications
This is a big concern for companies with more complex social programs and highly matrixed structures. Be sure you know ahead of time what other applications you’ll be using before you select a monitoring tool.

Global Coverage
If you’re doing business on a global scale make sure you’re picking up conversations on such sites as Orkut, Renren, StudiVZ, Bebo and Kontakte, just to name a few. This capability isn’t cheep so don’t buy it if you don’t need it. Click here for a comprehensive list of global social networking websites.

Support and Training
Many of these tools are becoming quite sophisticated and are ever-changing to meet the newest platforms; thus, it’s important that the account team is keeping you up-to-speed on what is relevant to you.

Metrics and Reporting
You better be able to measure what you’re doing with social media or you’ll be out of a job fast. The big question always revolves around ROI so you better come prepared with numbers and killer graphs to impress the CEO.

Platforms
This certainly isn’t a comprehensive list but this should get you started in the right direction. For a comprehensive list with platform description, pricing and links check out Seamless Social’s list.

For a quick comparison of some of these tools click here.

For those looking for lower cost solutions, check out “10 lower-priced monitoring services for nonprofits & organizations“

Building A Scalable Social Business Program

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Jason Sem in Corporate Social Strategy, Return on Investment, Social Media, Social Media Consulting | Leave a comment

Jeremiah Owyang, one of the leading social strategists, has been working closely with many of the world’s biggest brands to learn about where social media is headed and how companies can scale their business for social media.

He’s conducted research and has come up with some fantastic reports on corporate social strategy. Below, he’s laid out what I believe are essential steps for building social media programs:

Get into hub and spoke and develop a center of excellence
Leverage community for first tier marketing and support
Integrate both in the customer lifecycle as well as your corporate website
Launch a formalized advocacy program
Invest in Social Media Management Systems before you lose control

Here are some must-read articles from Owyang and the Altimeter Group for companies looking to build out an enterprise wide social media program:

Corporations Should Prioritize Social Business Spending
The Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist

Scalable Social Business Programs

Jeramiah Owyang, one of the leading social strategists, has been working closely with many of the biggest brands in the world to help learn about where social media is headed and making recommendations on how companies can scale their business for social media.

Here are five key’s for building social media programs:

Leverage community for first tier marketing and support.

Integrate both in the customer lifecycle as well as your corporate website.

Launch a formalized advocacy program.

Invest in Social Media Management Systems before you lose control.

Here are some must-read articles for companies looking to build out an enterprise wide social media program:

Corporations Should Prioritize Social Business Spending

The Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist

Keynote: Invest in Scalable Social Business Programs

View more presentations from Jeremiah Owyang

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Are you a Social Media Ninja or Rockstar?

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Jason Sem in Corporate Social Strategy, Social Media, Social Media Consulting | 2 Comments

Find Your Social Media Title

If you’re a company looking to hire a social media professional, you’ve probably come across some interesting titles. I know it’s been difficult to keep up with the latest titles so I thought I’d clear it up and provide some guidance what a social media rockstar or ninja actually does. Below is a handy guide:

Expert
This expert title sounds pretty bland nowadays compared to the others but this was the first label bestowed upon anyone who had a Twitter account and could use the term “tweet” properly in a sentence. Its still bantered about often these days by traditional types and is a generic descriptor of someone who has actually been paid to be on Facebook. There are a lot of them out there with varying degrees of business acumen so be smart when hiring one of them. (see How to Hire for Social Media)

Guru
Social media Gurus have certainly contributed to the quantity of online conversation but there’s not much to be said about the quality. Sure they constantly re-tweet Mashable and Chris Brogan’s posts but who doesn’t these days. According to Gurus; social media is a spiritual quest which can only be obtained through liking and following others in addition to having 500 mayorships on Foresquare. So if you want to reach social nirvana hire a Guru which will guarantee you spend lots of money and have very little to show for it.

Evangelist
Amen brothers and sisters! All hail to the social engagement gods and let the digital spirit take you to majestic mountain tops and a higher Klout score. If you haven’t drank the social media kool-aid yet you obviously haven’t seen one of these social media ministers speak. For if you had, you’d be playing Farmville on Facebook right now instead of reading this blog post. If you want to avoid being cast into eternal digital damnation bring one of these to your next board of director’s revival and sit back and watch the confusion ensue. Hallelujah!

Ninja
According to LinkedIn, the Ninja title is gaining in popularity at the expense of Gurus. Apparently Ninjas are very adept at blogging and tweeting and have a penchant for creating power point presentations about blogging and tweeting (see dramatization here). While Ninja’s move with stealth and can tweet faster than Paris Hilton on Ritalin they don’t actually infiltrate your competition and eliminate the CEO as the title would suggest. They mostly blog and tweet about blogging and tweeting.

Rock Star
This term is usually reserved for anyone on the agency side of marketing who can do a tap dance for clients and make them think that they’re not only an expert/ninja/guru but that they’re also famous in the Twittisphere and have 5,000,000 people retweet them at the drop of a hat. They most likely can give a dynamite presentation and wow the board room but when it actually comes to addressing anything that resembles a business objective, they turn to jello and crap their pants. Good night Cleveland!!

Titan
This is the big time now. Titans are people of exceptional importance and reputation in the social media community. This is not a self-anointed title like those other plebe titles but one that can only be bestowed upon by the traditional media gods who don’t have an clue about social technologies. They see that someone has tweeted about 40 times yesterday and have their own badge on Foursquare and deem them worthy of Titan status. Apparently once someone has been proclaimed a Titan, they have reached god status in the social media fish tank and are atomically re-tweetable no matter how banal the post actually is. Take heed of these deities for they shall inherit the inter-tubes.

There is also another title which barely deserves mention but I thought I’d include it just to give some perspective:

Corporate Social Strategist
These are the lowest of the social media food chain. Pond scum if you will. These folks have the gall to think that traditional marketing and communication efforts have a place on this earth and for some reason they think that social media can be integrated with other digital and offline strategies. FOOLS! They might as well call themselves a leper and declare their love of Bolsheviks and anchovies. Unfortunately, the only organizations who will hire these people are those lowly little Fortune 500 companies who don’t have the sense to know when to hang it up and call it quits. All these strategists do is sit in a room and repeat the mantra: ROI..ROI…ROI.. When will they realize that the day of the corporation is dead. VIVA la Revolución!!!

Obviously, this post is a little tongue and cheek but it’s very interesting to see some of these titles bantered about in professional circles. Most of the social media professionals I know don’t use any of these titles as they’ve become pejoratives in the digital community. However, there are a few people who do call themselves ninjas, gurus, etc. Best advice is stay away from this lot.

Many thanks to Adam Evers who prodded me to write this post after a couple of beers and a very interesting conversation. He’s also the brains behind this online social media title test.

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