The Quisenblog

Now that 2009 is almost in our rear view mirrors, it’s time to look ahead to what’s coming in 2010. What better time to prognosticate about the days ahead.

Oh sure. We could go for the low-hanging fruit here and “predict” that mass media spending will go down, online and Social Media spending will go up, Facebook will pass 400 million users, yada yada yada. That might score us some cheap points, but really, that stuff is sort of a given. So, for better or worse, here are some of our fearless predictions about some less frequently discussed marketing and social Media issues:

1. Destination sites continue to lose their relevance. One of the most under reported stories regarding online use this year is that despite overall traffic online growing by leaps and bounds, visits to high-traffic sites like Dell, Nike and many others have been trending downward. Meanwhile, social sites like Facebook have skyrocketed. Take a step back and it makes total sense—most information-rich websites are not set up to foster an ongoing relationship with visitors. They’re pretty much “one-and-done”—you can get everything you need from them in a single visit and have no reason to return. Things like blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and some microsites are designed for people to visit them often, and to engage customers on a much deeper level. It is here where more and more of the online traffic will continue to flow.
2. The Video Revolution comes to Social Media. Video will become a more important part of every social media platform. Not long ago, if I mentioned “video” and “Social Media” in the same sentence, you’d immediately think YouTube, Vimeo or some other video aggregator. Today, with increased bandwidth abounding and the mobile platform (especially smart phones) expanding, video has become a much more important part of all Social Media platforms. Embedded “how-to” videos on web sites. Live-action video conferences and powerpoints. Video emails. Videos posted on Facebook. Even video in blogs (now called “vlogging”).
3. Behavioral Targeting continues to help marketers get personal. Improved analytics now give us a more complete picture of our customers, and puts their purchases into more relevant context. This will help us better target our efforts to ensure hitting prospects when they are at a “moment of decision” in the purchase cycle. Whereas we used to target professional women 35-54 as the likely target of our salad dressing, we can now narrow it down to shoppers who have just picked up two heads of romaine lettuce and who haven’t purchased salad dressing for a few weeks.
4. The emergence of the “Super Portal.” Right now there are many Social Media platforms to deal with. Keeping up with all of them can eat up a sizable portion of your day. But now, platforms are beginning to offer tools that make it seamless to share content and jump between platforms automatically and effortlessly. In the world of Twitter, for example, Tweetdeck and Hoot Suite make it possible to manage much of your Social Media profile from a single dashboard. This convergence of platforms is in turn going to free us up so we can have even more involvement in Social Media.
5. Great content remains the ultimate “game changer.” While a lot of factors play in to the virility of content, none is more important than having a great idea. Great content not only generates interest in the medium for which it was created, it also spreads quickly to other platforms and lends itself to being spread by the community and re-purposed and “mashed up” by the audience as well. All of which means more exposure for the producer. Susan Boyle, The Wedding Dance, and The Evian Rollerskating Babies are just the beginning.
6. Content on demand, when you want it, where you want it. This continues a trend of breaking the tether to a television or a laptop. The emergence of mobile is moving us even more into a totally “on demand” society. Comcast’s recent announcement that it will provide subscribers with anytime access to 27 channels of real-time programming through its “TV Everywhere” program (going online by year’s end) could provide a platform tipping point.
7. More information to marketers makes decisions harder, not easier. Tools like Google Analytics provide a wealth of data for marketers, but at the end of the day, data is just data. To make sense of it you need to understand the story that data is telling and what the opportunities are around it. Otherwise you will find yourself in the 2010 version of “paralysis by analysis.”

If you have any marketing/Social Media predictions for 2010 you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you.

Posted by Mickey

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Mickey Social Media 2009, blogs, Comcast TV Everywhere, customer engagement, Dell, Facebook, Google, microsites, mobile platform, Nike, Super Portal, Twitter feeds, Vimeo, vlogging, YouTube

This week’s social media blog posts:
Monday: Seven ways to doom a Social Media program.
Tuesday: Co-Creating with Social Media.
Wednesday: Building Brand Evangelism through Social Media.
Thursday: Social Media and Reputation Management.
Friday: Now that you’ve engaged, it’s time to re-engage.

(This is the last in our series of Social Media posts for the month of October. We welcome your feedback on the series.)

So let’s say your first foray into Social Media was a success.

You scrubbed your customer database so you have a good list. You put together an email blast with compelling creative and an intriguing offer. And you got eye-popping “open” and “conversion” rates. Congratulations!

Now before you pop that bottle of champagne, think about your next engagement with them, and how you can make it a little more meaningful.

Their first opt-in should be translated that they liked your offer, not necessarily that they are somehow “passionate” about you. This first engagement is key, but it should not be considered an unmitigated Social Media success story.

The challenge is to keep your initial “hand-raisers” opted-in. And to make your communications with them a conversation, so you find out more about them, how they view your organization and its offerings, what makes them more likely to buy from you, to convince them to serve as the conduit between their communities and you, and help you identify opportunities for deeper engagement.

It helps to think of the customers who opt-in for the first time as “trial customers.” They liked what it was you asked them to respond to. The next step though is less clear. The key is to stay relevant. A 10% off coupon may attract a lot of attention the first time you do it, but it is important to recognize this act as a conversation-starter. It will help you find out who’s interested. At that point you need to deepen the conversation.

This first engagement is an opportunity to find out more about your “hand raisers” than their email addresses or how they found you. Let’s say your first contact was a coupon you sent via email. As part of the redemption process, you could put together a quick survey to find out a little more about redeemers and what they would like to see in future communications from you. Once you know what customers are looking for, you can put together a calendar of events and mailings that will continue to be relevant for them. And the more they redeem and reciprocate the communication, the more you will inevitably learn about them. Your goal in the early stages of engagement are to learn as much as you can about your followers and continually be relevant to them to ensure continued engagement.

Once you have established this “first circle” of followers, you should be able to incite them to share with others in their communities. You can do this with “Bring a Friend” events, “two-for-one” offers or offer bounties on new customers.

An example of an organization that does a great job re-engaging with its followers is Woot.com. This is an online retailer who offers one unbelievable deal on one specific item each day, and once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.

The company built a loyal following because its community knows that even though 9 times in 10, the offer will be for something they would never buy, that 1 time in 10 will get them an unbelievable deal. Woot.com stays relevant to its community by holding to its promise (Brand Vision) of offering one unbelievable deal each day. By seeing what its customers purchased (or tried to purchase) and the velocity at which items moved, Woot is able to streamline its product offerings and leverage its buying power. In short, it becomes even more relevant to its community.

Although today marks the official end of Social Media Month, we still have more Social Media ground to cover. We’ll be sending out these posts in the coming days and weeks, so please keep an eye out for the Quisenblog.

We’d love to hear your comments on the series. Leave your comments or questions here, or email me here.

Posted by Mickey

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Mickey Social Media brand loyalty, brand vision, conversations, customer engagement, relevant content