MarketingMuses

Does “Like It” Mean They’ll Buy It?

Social media is now an essential element of many companies' marketing programs, but how should social media marketing and advertising be planned, executed, and measured.

Yesterday, I was at the San Francisco headquarters of Racepoint Group (RPG), a public relations agency that is very effective at combining traditional PR with social media. I’ve worked with RPG at a couple of my prior companies, and I was introducing a present consulting client and RPG to each other.

We all had heard a couple of reports about Facebook on NPR that morning: GM Will No Longer Buys Ads On Facebook, and Pizza Delicious Bought An Ad On Facebook. How Did It Do?  Both reports raised questions about the value of Facebook advertising.  A quote from the GM report, attributed to the Wall Street Journal, stated:

"Asked about the move, GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick said the Detroit auto maker 'is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important.' Content refers to the unpaid Facebook pages many companies use to promote their products.

"GM, started to re-evaluate its Facebook strategy earlier this year after its marketing team began to question the effectiveness of the ads. GM marketing executives, including Mr. Ewanick, met with Facebook managers to address concerns about the site's effectiveness and left unconvinced advertising on the website made sense, according to people familiar with GM's thinking."

The report on Pizza Delicious details how Facebook advertising performed for a New York-style takeout pizza vendor in New Orleans.  After targeting people who had other New York likes failed to produce results, Pizza Delicious targeted New Orleans fans of Italian food.  As the graphic shows, Pizza Delicious got close to 20 times the number of Facebook fans it usually gets in two days.

Unfortunately, the new fans didn’t turn into new customers.  According to the report, “After a long night of asking every single customer where he found out about Pizza Delicious, not one said it was through Facebook.”  The report concludes, “Maybe at some point, the new Pizza Delicious fans will show up and buy some pizza. But social advertising is so new that nobody knows for sure. It's still unproven, untested and largely unstudied.”

After this interesting diversion, we returned to the specific question of how to use social media effectively in a B2B, rather than B2C, marketing program. Social media can be very effective in the first two stages of the three-stage B2B buyer’s process. In the first stage, buyers want to understand opportunities and gain more knowledge about solutions. Videos, podcasts and white papers that describe the opportunities and solutions can be effectively distributed through social media channels. In the second stage, buyers want to define their specific problem and evaluate different solutions.  Case studies that show how companies have used your solution to solve their specific problem can be effectively presented in different media (video, audio and print) through social media channels. Social media is less effective in the final stage of the B2B buyer’s process, when the buyer is selecting the best option and negotiating terms. 

Research by SiriusDecisions shows that while B2B buyers spend 80% of their time in the first two stages of the purchase decision process, and only 20% in stage three, sellers devote 80% of their marketing resources to stage three and only 20% to the first two, most formative, stages. In my experience, social media is best used in the first two stages of the B2B buyer’s process using the following guidelines:

A Social Media Strategy – Understand how social media can best serve as part of your larger B2B marketing strategy.  I described this in a previous post Groundswell: A Guidebook for the Social Media Journey.

Understand How Your Audience Uses Social Media – When developing a B2B social media strategy in 2009, I reviewed research from Outsell that showed while 50.8% of scientists and engineers had Facebook accounts, and only 28.0% had LinkedIn accounts, the target audience firmly segregated their use of the two: Facebook was almost exclusively for personal use, while LinkedIn was used for business. Although LinkedIn had lower overall use, it was, by far, the best choice for B2B purposes.

Think Like a Publisher – In The New Rules of Marketing and PR, David Scott Meerman describes the content that is best suited for social media, “What works is a focus on your buyers and their problems. What fails is an egocentric display of your products and services.  When you understand your audience, you can construct an editorial and content strategy just for them.  In order to implement a successful strategy, think like a publisher.”

Integrate Social Media into a Unified Digital Marketing Operation – A unified digital marketing operation integrates social media along with other new and traditional marketing techniques in a manner that aligns with the B2B buyer’s three-stage decision process and allows you to measure the effectiveness of all marketing and lead generation channels.

 

A Unified Digital Marketing Operation

 

A unified digital marketing operation can help small and mid-size B2B companies:

Compete successfully with much larger companies

Produce a better return on investment (ROI)

Generate incremental revenue

Increase enterprise value

This short eBook describes how a unified digital marketing operation can be designed and built to fully utilize new digital marketing and communication technologies and achieve optimal demand generation performance.  

 

A Unified Digital Marketing Operation

View more presentations from Bruce Pharr

Disneyland: The Power of Vision and of Story Telling

 

“To all you come to this happy place; welcome.  Disneyland is your land.  Here age relives fond memories of the past…and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.  Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America…with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.” – Walt Disney, July 17, 1955

 

 

This summer was our son’s ninth birthday, so mom and I joined him for five days at “The Happiest Place on Earth.”  Disneyland is a case study in user experience and brand management.  I believe its success is based, primarily, on two factors: The vision Walt Disney voiced 55 years ago, and the stories that differentiate the same or similar activities at Disneyland from those at a traditional “amusement park.”

Many of the “rides” at Disneyland are very similar.  You are conveyed from one point to another at varying speeds and with different degrees of undulation, geared to the age and size of the rider.  Our son is now tall enough to ride everything.  As a result, we stood in long lines to experience very similar forms of locomotion.  Space Mountain and Indiana Jones Adventure are, essentially, roller coasters.  However, each ride experience is unique because each occurs within the context of a different story. 

Disney has always been characterized by great stories.  The acquisition of Pixar, with the resulting appointment of John Lasseter as chief creative officer, has amplified that tradition.  (Improbably, Lasseter was fired from Disney Studios in the 1980s when he attempted to introduce computer animation.)  Pixar stories permeate Disneyland and California Adventure Park, and form the basis for rides such as Monsters Inc. and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.

 

 

Stories aren’t limited to the rides.  We started most days with breakfast at the Storytellers Café (Chip and Dale are my son’s favorites).  One evening, I noticed a group of kids and adults watching a classic Disney movie in the lobby of the hotel where we were staying.  Nearby, another group of kids surrounded an adult reading a story in front of the fireplace. 

I first visited Disneyland in 1966.  My most vivid memory is not the rides, but sitting in a darkened theatre watching “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.”  As I sat in the theatre 44 years later with my son, I can attest to the realization of Walt Disney’s vision that, “Here age relives fond memories of the past.”

 

 

What I Learned in School: Social Good Marketing Can Go Bad

Unless your business model is based on social good, can you develop and execute a successful external social good media program without first developing, nurturing and embedding it into your company’s internal culture?

I spent August 8 through 18 as a member of the 2010 Strategic Marketing Management executive education program at Stanford GSB.  It was an exceptional experience.  Fifty students from around the world covered a broad range of marketing and business topics with professors and business leaders.  I will be reviewing some of these in the coming weeks.

Jennifer Aaker led a session titled The Dragonfly Effect: Harnessing Social Media for Impact.  It included the very effective and moving example of Sameer Bhatia and Vinay Chakravarthy Using Social Media to Save Lives.  Jennifer also discussed brand authenticity.  She reviewed survey results showing that 59% of participants couldn’t or didn’t name an authentic for-profit brand, and 49% of participants couldn’t or didn’t name an authentic non-profit brand.

Discussions among members in class and at dinner that evening led to the following question: Unless your business model is based on social good, can you develop and execute a successful external social good media program without first developing, nurturing and embedding it into your company’s internal culture?

Organizations such as Kiva, and companies such as The Body Shop and World of Good were founded on social good principles.  Kiva’s mission is to, “connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty.”  World of Good describes itself as, “the world’s first online marketplace to convene thousands of People Positive and Eco Positive sellers and products all in one place, empowering you to shop in ways that align with your personal values.”  The Body Shop states that it, “has constantly sought out natural ingredients…to enhance your natural beauty,” and, “strives to protect this beautiful planet and the people who depend on it—not because it’s fashionable, but based on the belief that it’s the only way to do business.”

In these examples, social good is embedded in the business models.  Unless the company acts in a way that is inconsistent with or contradictory to its business model, its brand should be associated with social good.

But what if you launch a social good marketing campaign that may not be consistent with your company’s business model?  What if the “espoused values” of one of your company brands is directly contradicted by the advertising campaign of another?  This is exactly what Unilever encountered when the message in its Dove Self-Esteem Fund advertising and social media campaign, targeting women of all ages, conflicted with the message in its Axe Effect advertising and social media campaign, targeting teenage and young-adult males.

Here’s a Dove Film titled Onslaught produced by the company.

Here’s the same video shell (intro and audio) edited with video images from the Axe Effect campaign.

It seems to me that incorporating social good messages into an external marketing campaign when that message is not part of your company’s business model or internal culture is inauthentic and, as a result, risky.  I tried to think of a company that has created an authentic external image of social good without first establishing it as part of their internal culture either through their business model or values (e.g., The HP Way before Carly, Pat and Mark).  I can’t!

Can you think of one?  If so, please comment with an example.

A Recipe for a Winning Webinar

Here are the essential elements of a webinar that outperforms the norm, with case study results from a recent one that followed the recipe.

 

1. Address a Hot Topic - The more relevant and timely the topic, the higher the attendance and level of interest will be for the webinar.
2. Partner with a Respected Third Party - Partnering with an analyst group, professional organization, or respected publication can improve the quantity and quality of attendees in a couple of ways.  First, co-sponsorship with an independent, respected third party implies that the webinar is more balanced and less biased than one sponsored by your company alone.  Second, the third-party will usually publicize the webinar to their membership or readership, which can significantly increase your reach, registration and attendance.
3. Use a Third Party Moderator - A third-party partner can usually provide an analyst, editor or other unbiased expert to moderate the webinar.  This adds greater credibility than you or someone from your company moderating the webinar.
4. Have a Customer Present a Case Study - Similar to partnering with a respected third party, a real customer reviewing a real process, decision and result is much more credible and interesting than you doing it yourself. 
5. Try and Limit Your Involvement to Answering Questions - Answering a question is much more powerful and effective than making a statement.  First, you know the audience, especially the person asking the question, is interested in what you have to say.  Second, people listen more closely to answers than statements.  Have the person most knowledgeable about the webinar subject answer the questions, and stay on topic.  This is not the time to try and broadcast your marketing message.  Just answer the questions clearly and concisely.
6. Follow Up with Next Step Options - A few days after the webinar, contact attendees with options for them to learn more and take the next step.  Make sure that there are options for each phase of the buyer education and decision process: awareness, discovery and validation.

 

A Webinar Case Study and the Results

Symyx Technologies recently conducted the most successful webinar in its history: one that significantly exceeded average webinar metrics and produced an exceptional return-on-investment.

Symyx partnered with the American Chemical Society to present a webinar on the electronic laboratory notebook (ELN), a fast-growing software technology that is moving from early adoption to mainstream acceptance.  The webinar was promoted by Symyx through direct marketing, its website, and its social media channels, and by ACS to its 160,000 members.  Rick Mullin, a senior editor at Chemical & Engineering News (an ACS publication) moderated the case study presentation by Gabriel Weatherhead, Ph.D., Lead Systems Engineer at Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company.  Gabriel described the process Millennium used to select an enterprise ELN for chemistry and biology disciplines.  A Symyx Vice President of Product Management and Strategy was available to answer questions after the presentation by Gabriel.

ACS co-sponsors and conducts webinars with companies every couple of weeks.  Based on its metrics for these events, the Symyx webinar generated 3 times more registrations and attendees than the average, and it generated 145 questions.  Also, the co-sponsored webinar generated 10 times more registrations and attendees than webinars publicized and conducted by Symyx alone.  The average cost of attendee acquisition was about $20, well below the average cost per inquiry from other demand generation activities. 

Attendees were contacted after the presentation and directed to an ELN microsite where they can access a pdf copy of the Millennium case study, as well as other ELN marketing assets that allow respondents to learn more and take the next step in the buyer education and decision process.  
Symyx, in turn, can nurture and track prospects going forward, and eventually provide sales with a well-developed profile of a well-qualified prospective buyer: the definition of a sales opportunity. 

Think Like a Publisher (to become a more effective marketer)

What works is a focus on your buyers and their problems. What fails is an egocentric display of your products and services.  When you understand your audience, you can construct an editorial and content strategy just for them.  In order to implement a successful strategy, think like a publisher. – The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

Scientists are a special class of B2B technology customer.  They are very skeptical of advertising and publicity, which they consider to be largely “hype and spin.”  On the other hand, scientists live to publish.  One way to take advantage of this inclination is to publish a high-quality periodical. 

Case studies are one of the most effective means of addressing a potential buyer’s question, “How does a product or technology meet my specific business need.”  Case studies are also very effective in helping an emerging technology “cross the chasm” by providing a, “well-established reference,” as to how, “other people have fared with the product.”

At Symyx Technologies, a scientific software company, we produce Molecular Connection, a semi-annual scientific R&D publication, as our primary thought leadership vehicle.  It includes state of industry commentaries, by industry analysts and experts, and technology reviews.  But the core of the publication is the customer case studies from scientists, laboratory managers, and information technology professionals at biopharmaceutical leaders AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, Elan, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Millennium.  The case studies have three common characteristics: 1) they name the company, 2) they describe the benefit the user derives from the product or service, and 3) they liberally quote specific users.

We print a small quantity of the publication (about 1,000) as a leave behind for sales personnel (they rate it as their most effective sales enablement tool) and we use it as our primary handout at major events.  In fact, it is the only collateral we still print (all other collateral is only available in electronic format).  The case studies also are used individually in electronic format for automated direct marketing campaigns, where they are our most effective incentive for demand generation, and on our website, microsites, and blog. 

While the case studies are powerful new media assets, I am certain that it would be difficult or impossible to obtain the cooperation of customers to produce them if they were not part of a print publication.  Think like a publisher, and become a more effective marketer.

The Sound of One Hand Presenting

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. – Charles Mingus

Garr Reynolds combines his communications expertise (narrative and design), his experience as a jazz musician, and the tenets of Zen simplicity to undertake a noble endeavor: improve the quality and effectiveness of slide ware presentations.

His book, Presentation Zen, summarizes key points at the end of each chapter, and uses visual examples throughout to illustrate these key points.  But his goal is much more than simply providing a handbook with tips for making better presentations.  The real ambition of the book is revealed in the text where he attempts to change the way you think about presentations.  

I suspect this will be the most difficult part for most readers, especially those who may be looking for a quick fix or checklist.  Putting yourself “in the audience” to develop your presentation and using slides to illustrate and punctuate your “spoken” narrative (the real presentation) will be a challenge to most business and technology presenters.  But the greatest challenge may be the time it takes to achieve a “less is more” presentation.  It is so much easier and quicker to stuff everything into a slide deck than to take the time required to achieve the simplicity, clarity and restraint the author advocates.  As he states, “Simplicity is not easy, in fact, it is hard.” 

Editing all of the information into its simplest form, illustrating it well, and practicing the presentation until you can deliver it as naturally as a coffee shop conversation takes time and commitment.  However, if you are willing to think differently and invest the time required to develop, design and deliver more effective presentations, this book can most certainly help you achieve that end. 

PS – The author also has a very popular blog on presentation design and delivery at presentationzen.com.

New Function, New Look, New Feel

DiscoveryGate was one of the first software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications for the scientific community.  Introduced about 7 years ago, it provided scientists access to compounds and related data from a Web browser on their desktop, something they previously could do only through proprietary software.

Earlier this year, the development team demonstrated new, advanced search functions for the product.  We decided that the new functions deserved a new look and feel.  Marketing led the efforts of an external design group, 1185 Design, to design a new logo and user interface, and to coordinate the activities with our development team.  We also recruited The Linus Group to develop an All New DiscoveryGate Quick Tour, which highlights the improvements in function and form.

Come and See the Show! (Part 6)

We would like it to be known the exhibits that were shown were exclusively our own—all our own, all our own. - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

 

Share the Experience Globally Through Social Media

Tweets and blog posts allow those you cannot attend the conference to follow it remotely.  Guest bloggers and video interviews with speakers expand the point of view and enhance coverage.

Answer These Four Questions Before You Do Anything

Answer these four questions before you start any project or program (no matter how big or small):

1. WHY am I doing this? Is it for brand equity, thought leadership, learning (e.g., market research), teaching (education or training), demand generation and/or sales support. 
2. WHO is the target audience (market)? Are you targeting present or prospective customers, employees, analysts (financial, business or technology), editors and reporters, bloggers, shareholders?
3. WHAT is the goal? Is there a specific action you want the audience to take or a key message you want them to remember? Or is there specific information you want to obtain?
4. HOW will I measure success? Are you looking for a specific number of responses, opportunities or bookings, an increase in brand awareness over a specific period of time, or a quantity and quality of online and/or offline media coverage?

If you can't answer any one of these questions, seriously reconsider wether you should undertake the project.  You could be wasting time and money on something of questionable value.

I've formalized this process in a Marketing Asset Development (MAD) form. If you would like a copy, contact me.