Posts tagged financial impact


Does the social web primarily benefit service companies?

Dec 1st

12 comments

factory-workers

One of my favorite thought leaders and {grow} community members is John Bottom, a director at the Base One marketing agency in London.  John and I have had an on-going dialogue about the evolution of socal media and one of his recent comments caught my attention:

The people benefiting most from Twitter right now are obviously in the information businesses.  We are all marketers here and we are sharing views and ideas because that’s what we ultimately sell. If you’re selling something more physical, you need to first create the information-surround market (or at least understand the information-surround market) before you can start to get benefit from Twitter and other social media platforms.

What I mean is that, if you sell power tools, you rely on people talking about power tools online before Twitter starts to have relevance to you – and these people are taking longer to embrace Twitter than the rest of us, because our benefits are more immediate. That doesn’t mean it won’t come, but it makes it harder for us to convince them at those marketing meetings.

In this simple statement John sums up one of the biggest obstacles facing B2B marketers.

As I look at the social media landscape, at least for small and medium businesses, he appears to be correct … at least based in my own experience.  I think there are a couple of important business implications from this simple observation:

1) About 75% of Fortune 100 companies are actively involved in social media. Some of them (Boeing, GE) are industrial B2B’s.  Small businesses can learn from them to see how their brand-builidng online strategies might parallel their own.

2) This emphasizes the importance of considering social media as just one part of an overall marketing strategy.

3) It also implies the importance of doing a customer audit as part of that strategy development.  Are your customers online? If so, where?  If not, why not?  Don’t spend money in this area if the customers aren’t there.

4) One key to a successful marketing strategy is finding meaningful points of differentiation. This does not necessarily have to be in the product or service itself. It can be in HOW the goods are marketed and sold. So if competitors are not using the social web as a marketing channel and your customers are there, this can be a wonderful opportunity.

Of course this is all predicated on an assumption that B2B customers will eventually pick up on social media. I’m wondering what the timeframe will be … I have to tell you I still see a lot of blank stares at meetings with industrial clients!  What do you think about this?  Will we see a day when a larger diversity of products will benefit from the social web?

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Will an economic recovery pummel social media?

Nov 15th

17 comments

now-hiring

I’ve had the great privilege of teaching a college-sponsored class on social media marketing and as usual, I’m learning more from the class than what they’ve learned from me … but that will be our little secret, OK?

As I was providing examples of how you can leverage content across various channels to increase awareness, I had to admit that I didn’t practice this very well myself.  Why?  I just don’t have the time.

My marketing consulting practice has been very strong, and as I strive for an ideal work-life balance, something has to give.  Time spent on incremental efforts like Facebook and Twitter has to take a back seat to family and customer needs.

This may seem like heresy from somebody who lives and breathes marketing, but I think this will be reality for more and more people.  As the economy heats up, unemployed, or under-employed, individuals spending vast amounts of time on the social web and networking will have to make new choices as they return to work.

Here’s my hypothesis:  The growth of social media will slow as the economy improves.  And in areas where the economy is doing extremely well, social media usage may actually decline slightly.

Other possible implications:

  • As people return to work, the prime activity level on social media will be more heavily-weighted to the evening hours, since many companies restrict social media usage in the workplace.
  • The number of channels in which people participate will narrow. This may hasten the decline of some platforms like MySpace.
  • There may even be a slight shift in advertising budgets BACK to traditional media (drive-time radio?) since access to Internet-based impressions will be limited in a workplace.  How do you see a Facebook ad when you’re working a construction job?

I believe that use of the social web will still grow overall as people and companies find clever new ways to make the underlying technologies more useful and fun. But I think it is unavoidable that an improving economy will temper this growth.  The best environment for social media growth is when people have a lot of time on their hands and a shift is in our future.  Do you agree?

Note:  In addition to some wonderful comments below, you can find a nice counterpoint perspective on Gregg Morris’s related blog post: http://bit.ly/3tQtiW

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Three chronic problems emerging for social media professionals

Oct 27th

20 comments

Over the past two weeks I’ve had the chance to personally interview a dozen leading American companies on their use of social media. The SM success stories are starting to emerge, but so are the problems. Here are three chronic problems I heard in almost every interview:
Sponsorship. A true story: One of the most talented and successful social media marketers I have known recently got sacked because his boss thought his whole program was “stupid.” I have had many people ask me, “How do I explain this to my boss?” While individual or “grassroot” efforts can work under the radar for short periods of time, without executive sponsorship from the top, the effort will eventually wither.
Measurement Systems. Here’s the dilemma: Lots of free statistics are available, but who has the time to collect, organize and interpret all this data? Emerging “listening” platforms are too expensive for many small companies. What the world needs is an inexpensive, comprehensive, cross-platform social media measurement dashboard. Are there any out there?
Time. All of the people I spoke to have been in their traditional marketing jobs for some period and took on social media as an extra effort. Every single person is struggling with the time soak of social media. Companies typically aren’t hiring extra people to work on social media, especially in this economy. What are your strategies for social media time management?
Do these issues ring true for you? How are you coping?

Story behind the photo: This is a shot I took at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London a few years ago. I can’t recall the sculptor. Natural colors — no PhotoShop! : )

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Twitter as super hero

Sep 9th

6 comments

My friend Dr. Jerri Yates passed this story along illustrating the amazing power of Twitter. It’s from a mommy blog and it’s a tale worth telling, or in this case, summarizing, because the original post is LOOONG!
In this Twitter as hero tale, the star is blogger Heather Armstrong, who purchased a new washing machine to keep up with the diapers of her propitiously-pooping newborn. The brand-new $1,300 machine didn’t work. After several weeks of botched service calls, Heather vents on Twitter:
“So that you may not have to suffer like we have: DO NOT EVER BUY A MAYTAG. I repeat: OUR MAYTAG EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN A NIGHTMARE.”
After a few similarly-scalding messages, the magic began. She received messages from Maytag competitors offering to help. Then she received a phone call from an executive at the Maytag corporate office who contacted an alternate repairs service, had the appropriate parts over-nighted, and had the machine repaired in less than a day. And Bosch offered to give her a free washing machine, which she accepted and donated to a local shelter.
If this doesn’t help you understand why your company needs to be in the thick of social media, you must be brain-dead.
A) It’s where your customers are (and that includes B2B, too mister!)
B) It’s where your customers speak to you
C) If you don’t listen and respond, your competitors will!
Illustration: Monkey Works
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