Archive for the ‘Measurement’ Category
I am off to Boston!
Monday and Tuesday I’ll be at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum and I am really looking forward to it! After attending the MarketingProfs’ Digital Marketing Mixer in October, I have no doubt that the B2B Forum will deliver on its promise to re-charge, re-invent, re-engage us marketers!
The B2B Forum will focus on three key areas:
- Integrating marketing programs for better results
- Measuring and evaluating marketing programs to prove ROI
- Keeping customers and prospects engaged
With the economical situation in the US and marketing campaigns, well, just not working quite the way they used to…we can safely say that these are the top three areas a lot of marketers are concerned about.
I am looking forward to meeting a lot of new people, meeting people I’ve only known online and hanging out with good friends.
While at the B2B Forum Ann Handley and I will be taking turns doing one-on-one Twitter therapy sessions so if your attending and need some help integrating Twitter into your marketing or communications strategy, stop by!
I also plan on blogging some of the sessions so you can see the value you’ll receive by attending MarketingProfs events. Some of the sessions I’ll be attending include:
- Marketing 2.0: Integrating Social Media into Your Marketing Mix with Sandy Carter, IBM
- The 2009 Economic Impact on B2B Marketing Budgets and Practices with Roy Young, MarketingProfs; Sandy Carter, IBM; and Laura Ramos, Forrester
- Developing Online Communities that Increase Customer Loyalty with Diane Hessan, Communispace; Gretchen Harding, Intuit; Joanne Del Toro, Network Solutions; Nathan Beverly, WellPoint Corporate Marketing
- Tales from the Trenches, How Organizations are Measuring Value in Social Media with Katie Payne, KDPaine & Partners
If you’ll be in Boston for the B2B Forum, I hope to see you there!
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Implementing & Measuring Public Relationships…You can do it!
As I mentioned yesterday in my dirty little secret about social media post (by the way, which was neither dirty nor a secret…just a catchy headline), I spoke to the Greater Fort Worth Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) about implementing and measuring social media.
I wanted to share my slides with everyone and hopefully share the love that social media can indeed be measured by those who so choose to do so.
Now to be perfectly clear, I am not the magician behind measuring social media. That, my friends, would be Katie Delahaye Paine. If you are in business and shooting from the hip (which your executives might not appreciate or you may be wondering how to quantify all that time on Twitter) when it comes to your social media engagement (or with your publics in general), I strongly suggest that you get Katie’s book Measuring Public Relationships because it makes the scary task rolling up your sleeves to benchmark, analyze and measure seem like an easy thing to do…and at the end of the journey, there is proof for your management team (or yourself) that you are indeed heading in the right direction and making a difference with your efforts (and perhaps either saving money or increasing sales!).
Katie’s book covers:
- An Introduction to Measurement
- Measuring Tools
- Measuring Relationships with the Media
- Measuring Relationships with Analysts & Influencers
- Comparing Media Relations to Other Marketing Disciplines
- Measuring Trust and Mistrust
- Measuring the Impact of Events and Sponsorships
- Measuring Internal Communications
- Measuring Blogs and Online Relationships
- Measuring Relationships in a Crisis
- Measuring Relationships developed through Speaking Engagements
- Measuring Relationships with Members of your Organization
- Measuring Relationships with Sales People, Channel Partners, and Franchises
- Measuring Relationships with the Investment Community
- Putting it all Together
Now, I know what you might be thinking. “I am not in PR.” Well, guess what? If you are engaged in social media, you are in PR now. As you can see from the list of chapters above, public relations aren’t just about the media…. It’s about all your publics, no matter who they are or where they may be.
In my presentation, I focused on measuring blogs, but you can use Katie’s guidance to measure all aspects of social media. [NOTE: All content used from Katie's book was done so with permission from KD Paine & Partners.]
Here are some other great books to help you get started in using social media to work with your publics:
- PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences by Deirdre Breakenridge
- Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR by Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge
I’d also suggest checking out your local PRSA chapters. The PRSA is just another great way to learn about all types of public relations.
A side note for non-profits: If you are considering engaging in social media…contact Katie Paine. She has a wonderful non-profit benchmark report & starter measurement kit available that shares important stats like: what’s “normal” in non-profit social media; what percentage positive/negative comments are standard; what people are doing on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc.; and who the influencers are in the non-profit space.
I would be interested in your feeback on my presentation…is it helpful for your social media planning and measurement?
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Communication silos don’t work
After 14 years of practicing integrated marketing communications (IMC), I never thought I’d write a post about it.
I guess there was an assumption on my part that after all these years that most marketers were already integrating their efforts…until I saw this comment on David Mullen’s blog post:
“I’ve heard many people in our industry scoff at the idea of integrated marketing communications. It was always great in theory, but hard and messy in practice.”
Scoff? Hard? Messy?
The definition of IMC on Wikipedia:
“a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.”
Sounds easy to me…
In their book “Integrated Marketing Communications: Putting it all Together and Making it Work” (1993), Don Schultz and Stanley Tannebaum state that IMC is also about “talking to people who buy or don’t buy based on what they see, hear, feel, and so on, not just about your product or service.”
What’s the problem? Why is IMC such a struggle? My first thought was to wonder how many agencies and corporations still exist with information silos. Perhaps a lot and maybe that’s the problem?
According to “Developing a Creative and Innovative Integrated Marketing Communications Plan“ by James R. Ogden, one insight might be:
“The problem with the integration of the marketing concept into today’s businesses and organizations is that many top executives learned different methods of management. The old adage ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ may be one of the stumbling blocks to the adoption of a customer orientation.”
The book then goes on to state:
“Many businesses are organized around departments, which are set up to specialize in given tasks. With this system, companies and organizations build fences around their duties. They become territorial in nature and want no part of corporate overlapping. Each territory needs to be protected by departmental managers, who may fear for their jobs. Because of these organizational structures, it has been hard to sell the marketing concept to many businesses and organizations, but without it there are decreased sales and profits.”
James Ogden wrote his book in 1998. Here is it 16 years since both books were written and it seems that businesses are still struggling with moving towards customer-oriented communications.
Back in the day, IMC referred to all the traditional marketing goodies: direct mail, PR, advertising, e-mail marketing, sales promotions, Internet marketing, etc.
But today, simply put, communication silos don’t work because marketers cannot silo how audiences & communities string together & respond to all the communications they receive. ( “Dear Customer: This message is from PR. That message is from Advertising. And the other message is from E-Marketing. Please don’t confuse the three as they serve different purposes, contain different messages and you must react to each separately so we can tell our VP of Marketing that our individual campaigns worked.”)
Like I said, I’ve been fortunate to have always been doing IMC, so I can’t comment on what the challenges are today. But I’d really like to gain some insights in to the mindset that David describes. If you are working in an agency or corporation that has not embraced IMC, would you be willing to share with us your insights, challenges and experiences?
And one final thought… what happens when we add social media to the mix? Will social media finally force companies out of their communication silos?
If you are a marketer interested in learning more about IMC, check out Amazon’s selection of books on IMC. Medill also offers the Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications.
NOTE: Integrated Marketing Communications was pioneered at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. However, other than a Digital Marketing course that covers social networking, it doesn’t appear that social media has been added to the curriculum.
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Personal Brand Equity: What’s it worth?
I had an interesting conversation with Peter Kim while out at SXSWi last week about my recent personal branding post and the comments he left a comment asking me to expand my thoughts from a corporate perspective and to explore the parallels between corporate and personal approaches. During our conversation Peter said that he thinks that most people will have a personal brand over time, so I asked him what he thought that would mean from a corporate viewpoint. He asked me to write a post on what I thought it meant and, well, you know me, I have lots of opinions and thoughts…so here goes.
I agree that most corporate people will begin to create online ‘personal brands’ by setting up LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, insert next new cool online tool here, accounts. But is that enough from the corporate perspective?
Having these accounts doesn’t automatically grant people with personal brand equity. And I think that’s the disconnect that I have with personal branding. Having a bunch of online accounts doesn’t just automatically equate to equity. But what you do with those accounts including the conversations you have and the people you are connected to does have the ability to establish online personas and reputations that might equate to equity and that’s what corporations are interested in. It’s like the new sales person showing up with an already established network. The sales person is implying that they have established relationships that will help to generate revenue (and their bonuses!). Sales people sell against a revenue number and that’s the potential equity they bring to the table. But what if you aren’t in sales? As a marketer, what does your personal brand bring to the table in the form of equity?
Let’s take a step back and wrap our heads around traditional corporate branding (there’s a method to the madness and boring definition review).
Brand: A name/mark intended to identify and differentiate a product/service of a seller
Brand Mark: The part of the brand that appears in the form of a symbol, design, distinct color/font
Brand Name: The part of the brand that can be vocalized (words, letters, numbers)
Brand Loyalty: A buyer’s commitment to repurchase the brand
Brand Equity: The value the brand adds to the product/service
For generations marketers have been branding with these terms in mind (think Coca-Cola, Nike, Amazon.com, etc.). But let’s look at it from a personal perspective in relation to working for a company, government agency, non-profit, university, etc. (the “corporate” perspective).
Personal Brand: A name/mark intended to identify and differentiate a product/service of a seller
Personal Brand Mark: part of the brand that appears in the form of a symbol, design, distinct color/font
Personal Brand Name: The part of the brand that can be vocalized (words, letters, numbers)
Personal Brand Loyalty: A buyer’s commitment to repurchase the brand
Personal Brand Equity: The value the brand adds to the product/service
So how do the definitions change when “personal” is added? And what should corporations look for or expect? You didn’t think they should hire you just because of your cool online presence, did you?
- What are you selling? How does your unique skill set, experience, reputation, etc. achieve corporate goals and objectives?
- What’s your brand mark? Perhaps you have a personal logo or an avatar (photo). Are you distinct?
- What’s your name? That’s obvious. But is it a well known name that a corporation would embrace? Is it a name recognized and established in the industry?
- How much loyalty do you have banked? Can you bring ready-to-buy customers/prospects to the table upon hiring? Does the brand loyalty you’ve established help shorten the sales cycle? Do you have marketing/PR relationships that help save money or generate revenue?
- What is your personal brand worth in revenue? What value does it add to the existing corporate brand? (Or does it conflict?) Does your personal brand help propel the corporate brand forward or create buzz?
The last one, personal brand equity is of a lot of interest to me. Years ago there was a push to make marketing professionals accountable (brand valuation) for the financial well-being of corporation brands. Wikipedia explains it this way: “[to] measure the brand as a financial asset. In short, a calculation is made regarding how much the brand is worth as an intangible asset. For example, if you were to take the value of the firm, as derived by its market capitalization–and then subtract tangible assets and “measurable” intangible assets–the residual would be the brand equity.”
From the brand equity perspective, what I am wondering is that if you feel strongly about personal branding, would you stake your income on it? Would you be willing to derive a portion of your income based on how much you positively or negatively influence brand valuation from an accountant’s viewpoint? (i.e. if it’s positive, more income; if it’s negative, less income perhaps even termination).
From the corporate perspective, should corporations pick people with established online personal brands over those that do not? What if their skill sets are the same? Should someone with an established online personal brand be paid more?
From a personal approach, what if you are the personal brand that owns the company? Do you view your personal brand equity stake to be even higher and therefore riskier?
Would a company full of personal brands that were compensated on personal brand equity provide a better customer experience?
What are your thoughts? What am I missing? What would you add?
[Image: iStock]
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Don’t get caught up in transparent spin
Marketers with enough years under their belt know what spin is and pretty much know they can’t get away with it —prospects and customers are just too savvy these days. Marketers involved in social media know what transparency is and know that customers expect it.
Recently I came across a press release from Cone [hat tip: @JackiePeters] regarding their recent 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study.
According to the survey:
- 60 percent of Americans use social media, and of those, 59 percent interact with companies on social media Web sites.
- 93 percent of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media.
(Social media was defined as: Technology facilitated dialogue among individuals or groups, such as blogs/microblogs, forums, wikis, content sharing, social networking, social bookmarking and social gaming. According to their spokesperson Andrea Larrumbide, the survey was conducted with a “pre-existing panel of respondents. We screened for prior usage of social media.”)
Those numbers didn’t sit quite right with me, so I relied on the numbers I’ve shared in the past. There are 301,621,157 people in the USA, of which 220,141,969 have Internet access.
Now stating that 60 percent of Americans use social media and 93 percent believe a company should have a social media presence (93% is about 204,732,031) seems to be a bit of a stretch.
I’d venture to guess that if I went to Any Town, USA and asked a group of Average Joes/Janes if they use social medial and believe companies should have a presence, I am pretty confident they wouldn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about. Heck, some marketers I speak with don’t even get social media!
eMarketer reported on September 3, 2008 a recent survey from Synovate that stated only 40% (5,200 of the 13,000 surveyed globally) of the Americans surveyed knew what a social network was. The eMarketer report also shared stats from a Universal McCann survey that states only 23.4% of the American population utilizes social networking with blog readership at: 23% daily, 42% weekly and 19% monthly.
These numbers seem to be a little more realistic.
Knowing about the above surveys, I reached out to Andrea Larrumbide and asked for a copy of the survey and the results (an executive overview like Universal McCann’s would have been great) and was told that they only share that information with paying customers. Interesting.
Skepticism aside, what can we learn about social media surveys and how we share data at a time when social media has become an important part of how we interact and do business?
- Don’t spin findings. Doesn’t “93% of those surveyed believe…” work better?
- Share your survey and findings in an executive format—it’ll provide credibility (that’s a no-brainer)
- If you are going to invest money in primary research, survey people outside the echo chamber
And for those researching social media or utilizing social media research to justify their plans, etc., don’t get caught up in research numbers that state what you want to hear. Question them.
Having done a fair amount of market research for the purposes of PR and thought leadership, I understand the urge to want to spin results and be the one company with the findings that justify its existence, but I am not a market researcher by trade.
That said, what’s your impression? Do you agree with my spin factor assessment? What tips would you offer to marketers and social media professionals when it comes to research?
[Photo: iStock]
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The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.theharteofmarketing.com. [If you have a question about what you can use from this blog, click on the above Creative Commons link to learn more.]
