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The Five Ps of successful Social Media Engagement

Irene Zalami — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 01:38:58 +0000

Social Media has changed the traditional notion of how brands connect, engage and evolve relationships with prospects and customers… but are brands connecting with their community in the right way?

“Six out of ten Britons & Americans do not want to engage with brands through social media, leading to companies creating mountains of digital waste.” Source: TNS Digital Life study (surveyed 72,000 consumers across 60 countries), November 2011

Furthermore the active audience primarily engaged when a promotion or special offer is involved, thus questioning the true integrity of the relationship.

Putting Tactics Before Strategy

Poor engagement leads to the creation of “Mountains of Digital Waste”, caused by the accumulation of thousands of brands rushing online to speak with customers “quickly” and “cheaply”, without considering who they want to talk to, and why. Their efforts are not carefully planned and considered.

Essentially, they put tactics before strategy and do not consider bigger picture.

Social Media is all about conversations and developing relationships, so it’s important to not only consider ways to generate engagement, but essential to have a strategy for responding back to your community in order to facilitate a two way dialogue to be formed.

Importance of Successful Engagement

Social Media offers brands a double edge sword; publishing complaints are a marketers worst nightmare, yet they present an opportunity to show off great customer care.

Rolling out a structured Engagement Strategy can provide a positive experience and develop valuable relationships with key stakeholders, thereby turn brand detractors into promoters and satisfied customers may become your most influential brand ambassadors! Furthermore higher engagement leads to higher reach on Facebook (for more, see Web Liquid’s Facebook Reach Analysis published in late 2011).

Case Study: Cass Business School

In March 2011, Cass Business School approached Web Liquid to help define their Social Media Strategy.

Objective: to drive growth in high calibre student applications across all products / courses by creating positive sentiment and brand perception, driven by engaging with potential, current students and other stakeholders and leveraging their positive experiences.

Initial Results: The first initiative focused on the August Student Intake period and concentrated on leveraging Facebook. This Facebook re-launch saw 434% more interactions than August 2010.

So, what are the secrets to building impactful and meaningful Social Media Engagement? I call them the Five P’s of Engagement:

1. Proposition
2. People
3. (Be) Provocative & Personal
4. Policies
5. Process

To find out more about the Five P’s, please see the presentation below, “The Secrets to Successful Social Media Engagement.”

Social Media Engagement – Irene Zalami presentation at Figaro Digital

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State of Social Media, Part III

Ben Semmar — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:11:26 +0000

When brands focus strictly on social media tactics they tend to barrage their fans and followers with brand-centric content and updates giving the impression that Billy May is somehow posthumously managing their social media accounts – or, more plainly, they tend to “broadcast”.

A tactic, by its very definition, is a one-off effort; an action taken as a means to some end. And, according to the “experts”, content is king when it comes to social media. So when trying to drive sales quickly, it seems natural that, as a result of the real time, breakneck pace of social media, brands would so fervently push out content to their respective constituencies. After all, you can’t blame them for trying to get your attention. But when taking a tactical approach to content dissemination – especially on sites like Facebook and Twitter – brands run the risk of becoming inconsistent, and that has implications on one of the most important factors in a brands’ online success: the user (read: consumer) experience.

The conventional wisdom put forth by the “experts” we discussed in Part 1 of this series is that, under whatever circumstances, brands must start a Facebook Page and Twitter account and then engage the resulting “community”. The communities often are built through “Like-baiting” or some other coercive means, and engagement typically takes on a look-at-me tone characterized by promotions or annoying calls to action. It’s as though brands are traipsing around the various social networks, Rickrolling everybody. (Hurts, doesn’t it?)

But the impact of this duplicitous behavior isn’t felt overnight – which is the reason it is thought to work. Because the fact of the matter is that there are over half a billion people on both Facebook and Twitter alone, meaning that there are plenty of people to come along and ‘Like’ your page, if only to watch one video. As the Likes begin to pile up, everybody gets excited and claims wild success but what they don’t know is that this doesn’t mean a thing; we saw this with the Digital Death campaign. What’s actually happening is that because of content that’s all things ACME, people aren’t staying around. Thus, they’re not sharing your content or becoming ‘brand advocates’, which really just means that nobody is telling their friends about you. It’s like Times Square. where there’s nothing but flashing lights, huge billboards and tourists merely passing through, because all of the locals try to avoid it at all costs. Why? Because the real New York has nothing to do with Toys ‘R ‘Us, the M&M’s store, or the ESPN Zone. The real New York is Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, Queens. It’s esoteric. And the only way to truly know the real New York is to experience it, authentically. Your brand should be no different.

Put simply, many brands aren’t yet able to build long lasting relationships through social media not through any fault of the medium itself. Rather, it’s because they aren’t giving the consumer what they want. And because of their strict focus on “building communities”, there is no higher objective that’s informing their actions; they don’t know why they’re building communities in the first place.

But while a brand’s objectives in social media are outside of the purview of this blog post, what we can talk about is what consumers want. And the answer lies in Word-of-Mouth (WOM).

As we saw in this post, and many others we’ve written here, a good Word-of-Mouth approach entails the monitoring of online conversation around a particular brand – what’s being said, where it’s being said, who’s saying it, etc. – and then teasing out insights based on the data. The potential applications of such insights to a social media strategy are manifold, but what intrigues me the most is the ability that a WOM program provides you with to target niche communities.

Take Sunshine Suites, a Realty Management firm that provides entrepreneurs and small business owners with affordable office space. With ambitious plans for growth they implemented a WOM-driven approach, with the goal of acquiring qualified leads among its target market. Being able to locate where entrepreneurs were engaging with each other, and understand the language that they were speaking, allowed Sunshine to develop a campaign that ultimately resulted in a 1200% acquisition increase.

The reason that this worked so well wasn’t simply because Sunshine Suites knew where their target market were having discussions, or even what they were saying. Partnering with MeetUp.com allowed Sunshine to create an experience for their prospective clients in a context that was familiar to them, which ultimately led to confidence in the brand – something that may not have been possible were it not for their WOM program.. And when consumers have more confidence, that means less persuading from the brand, an ROI-positive proposition if there ever was one.

Throughout this series, we’ve railed against the use of tactics in social media as a cheap means to an end. However, something needs to be made clear: tactics are an absolutely essential component to participation in any medium; critical, even. But they only prove useful when organized within a strategy that has clear objectives and that uses word-of-mouth insights to help create a user experience that is meaningful and conducive to the types of behavior that brands yearn so dearly for.

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OpenSkies Social Media Case Study

Matthew Cronin — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:28:53 +0000

British Airways’ launch of OpenSkies presented a unique opportunity to counter the prevailing public perception of airline ambivalence towards passengers. It’s an opportunity OpenSkies have capitalized on through innovative use of social media and community marketing – working with Web Liquid to develop and launch a corporate blog and engaging travel community influencers directly to spread word of mouth.

The new airline was built on the premise of personalized service with only 64 passengers on each plane, two spacious cabins including fully flat beds in business class and 24/7 concierge services that go well beyond what people expect from an airline today.

Long before they started flying, OpenSkies embraced its future passengers. Even before there was a plane painted in OpenSkies livery, Managing Director Dale Moss launched a blog to share the progress of OpenSkies’ development in social media channels. Through this unique dialogue the traveling public was able to engage with travelers and hear what they thought about the airline’s plans. More importantly Dale and the management team incorporated much of that feedback into the creation of the OpenSkies experience. This passenger-centric ethos of OpenSkies was immediately apparent, generating a lot of buzz amongst the premium and business travel community.

Through blog posts Dale introduced people to OpenSkies, recruited flight attendants, unveiled cabin classes, shared a time-lapse video of the painting of the first plane, discussed the meal service, shared the experience of the inaugural flight and more.

It was during the inaugural flight that OpenSkies literally welcomed social media onboard. 20 members of the influential Flyertalk.com community were invited to travel on OpenSkies in Biz and PREM+ roundtrip to Paris for a long weekend. They were encouraged to try every aspect of the experience, from the time they booked at flyopenskies.com, scheduled events and activities with the Concierge and enjoyed the comfort and services in-flight.

The results of British Airways OpenSkies’ blogging and social media marketing have been impressive:

Pre-launch anticipation for the new airline
Community co-creation of the brand and the product
Widespread Word-of-Mouth and inbound links from travel blogs, forums and communities
Significant advantages in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) resulting in substantial organic search traffic
Positive Consumer Generated Content (CGC) in the form of trip reports, photos and videos spreading across the web
Incremental bookings and a higher rate of conversion amongst those reached by OpenSkies community efforts

Full case studies of our social media work for OpenSkies are available on our website:
1) Launching a new airline
2) Social Media partnership with Flyertalk.com
3) Integrating measurement to ensure accountability

Click below for links to relevant agency/consulting services:

Social Media & Word-of-Mouth: Monitoring / Analytics / Community Development
Understand and leverage the conversations about your brand. Measure relationships, their strength and growth. Build digital spaces in which your brand advocates and prospects can engage.

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In 2007 we generated USD $251,655,481 in revenue for our clients

Alain Portmann — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:25:44 +0000

We define our clients’ success relative to the sustained return they obtain from their marketing investments. 2007 was a landmark year for our clients, in which their increased commitment to online marketing was rewarded by strong financial returns.

In 2007 we generated GBP £125,422,639 (USD $251,655,481) in revenue for our clients, delivering a return on investment of 23. In simple terms for every £1 a client gave us to invest, we gave them £23 back in revenue. This represents a 34% increase from the previous year.We know it is not all about the numbers either. At the core of these results is a comitment to service and taking care of our clients’ budgets, knowledge and personal objectives.

Delivering these results while maintaining operational efficiency is a challenge. A challenge we have met two years running.

Every day, one simple statement helps us focus our efforts.

“As our clients trust us with a larger portion of their marketing dollars, and the contribution to the bottom line of those investments grows; increased creativity, service, insight and accountability is required – an environment of thinking:returns.”

Webliquid return on investment ROI

About Alain Portmann

My job is simple. To inspire staff, clients and consumers.

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Strategic Consulting Case Study : Hilton Hotels

Alain Portmann — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:53:57 +0000

Driven by a strategic goal to drive business through their own direct websites, Hilton Hotels approached Web Liquid to assist in the deployment of an in-house eCommerce function and team responsible for coordinating and managing central Digital Marketing initiatives across the EMEA region.

The Solution: Web Liquid seconded two team members into Hilton, having one of the Founding Partners based in Hilton’s International headquarters in Watford three days a week. During the six-month project Web Liquid was responsible for supporting all central Online Marketing programs providing guidance to the local Marketing teams in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. The project focused on the following initiatives:

Channel management and planning ” managing a central eCommerce budget ensuring the most efficient allocation between eMail Marketing, Search Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Display Advertising and Affiliate Marketing.

Process integration with central Marketing team responsible for offline communications.

Localization of global online brand guidelines based on “Travel Should Take You Places” global advertising campaign.

Managing online channel specialists agencies including LUON (email), Bigmouthmedia (search), Cheetah Mail and local online agencies in Germany and Japan.

Digital Marketing training programs and advocacy for Online Marketing funding and initiatives among Regional Marketing Directors across the EMEA region.

About Alain Portmann

My job is simple. To inspire staff, clients and consumers.

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Campaign Analytics & Measurement Learnings

Alain Portmann — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 12:57:10 +0000

As part of a major acquisition campaign for one of our travel clients, Web Liquid undertook an in-depth analysis aimed at identifying the relationship between 1) search and display advertising and 2) tactics to increase the value of each conversion. While the campaign generated strong return on investment across display advertising and PPC search, we recognised the need to identify “optimisation insights” to drive increased revenue and efficiency.

Finding: Users exposed to three distinct display advertising messages throughout the campaign, produced average revenue 47% higher than the users who only converted through search.

Learning: Sequential serving of multiple messages across display campaigns combined with search will generate increased revenue.

Finding: 60% of users exposed to search only used brand terms before purchasing. 69% of users exposed to both search and display ads used brand search terms before purchasing.

Learning: Display advertising will prompt brand recall, driving increased demand for brand search terms across search engines.

Finding: A frequency of 10 ad exposures generated average revenue of £393, while users on less than three 3 ad exposures generated average revenue of £172.

Learning: Campaigns aimed at “meeting demand” should be frequency capped to 3 to 4 exposures, while campaigns aimed at “generating demand” should be assigned a higher exposure frequency. While low frequency (1 to 3) drives efficient conversion volume, increased frequency will drive incremental conversion quality by reinforcing the brand.

About Alain Portmann

My job is simple. To inspire staff, clients and consumers.

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Communications Planning Case Study: Hilton minibreaks

Matthew Cronin — Thu, 24 May 2007 15:17:43 +0000

Hilton’s “minibreaks” product was rolled out at the beginning of 2007 as a realignment of the leisure proposition and a means to unify the leisure travel product offering at Hilton properties around the world to capture more of the ‘quick trip’ market. A comprehensive integrated campaign was launched to promote the product features – no matter where a guest stays with Hilton, “minibreaks” offer flexible rate options, late weekend breakfast, meal inclusive rates, late weekend check out as well as discounts and freebies for children.

But with the specific challenge of driving minibreak bookings amongst North American travelers to international destinations, it was clear that the quick-trip positioning of the minibreak proposition would have to adapt to succeed.

Web Liquid’s experience marketing international travel products to N.A. travelers guided the development of a communications strategy to reposition the minibreaks product and effectively drive international hotel reservations. Online research amongst leisure travelers was conducted to evaluate interest in aspects of the minibreaks offering and strategy teams explored the application of Hilton’s Travel Should Take You Places© campaign theme to the proposition.

Ultimately the N.A.-to-international destinations minibreaks campaign was evolved to emphasize the flexibility and value aspects of the proposition making it compelling to travelers with plans for a longer vacation. At the same time, the messaging featured price points for specific destinations providing greater relevance and a strong call-to-action in highly targeted media.

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In 2006 we generated USD $133,535,453 in revenue and an average ROI of 19 for our clients

Matthew Cronin — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 23:00:02 +0000

We define our clients’ success relative to the sustained return they obtain from their marketing investments. 2006 was a landmark year for our clients, in which their increased commitment to online marketing was rewarded by strong financial and communication returns.

In 2006 we generated $133,535,453 in revenue from our clients’ investments in online media, delivering an overall return on investment of $19:1. The 19 to 1 profitability index takes in account all costs including creative, media, agency remuneration and ad-serving. These figures represent a 242% increase from 2005.

We thank our clients for their trust in our proven methodology and look forward to an equally successful year ahead.

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CGC Research & Marketing Case Study: Avis

Matthew Cronin — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:58:13 +0000

2006 saw the development of a new, long term marketing strategy by Avis. Key to this was the reinvigoration of the Avis core brand values – ‘We Try Harder’ – and building consumer confidence by striking a balance between the persuasiveness of a their marketing promise and consumers’ own personal perceptions of the brand.

Web Liquid developed a comprehensive approach to mine consumer insight and key market priorities from online word-of-mouth (WOM) and Consumer Generated Content (CGC) relating to Avis and its competitors, subsequently leveraging those findings in a ‘bottom up’ approach to:
- Evolve strategic communications planning
- Execute tactical marketing efforts offline & online
- Develop and launch the wetryharder.co.uk blog
- Initiate conversation with customers via online review sites, travel communities and forums
- Establish measurable benchmarks and monitor them to confirm impact and growth of related ‘through-the-line’ communications efforts

This approach was integrated across multiple Avis business units including marketing, sales and customer service, and approved at Board level given its impact on the entire business. Ever since implementation, the ongoing research and marketing program has achieved the objectives of developing more intimate customer relationships, growing confidence in the Avis brand by reinvigorating “We Try Harder”, and creating overall marketing efficiencies.

In addition this project won the “SOCAP Award for Innovation in Customer Service” at the 2007 UK National Customer Service Awards.

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Online Media Planning, Buying & Optimisation Case Study: XL Airways

Alain Portmann — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 15:13:30 +0000

In late 2003 XL Airways appointed Web Liquid as its Digital Marketing Agency of Record. Before engaging into communications and media planning we defined a series of commercial imperatives to achieve.

These commercial imperatives helped us identify and guide our media and creative approach. Furthermore, this approach helped us identify and make recommendations on optimising the different elements that would help us achieve these commercial objectives.

The commercial objectives defined together with XL Airways marketing and management team included: 1) increase awareness and consideration, 2) drive business online to reduce dependence on tour operators, 3) increase margin and, 4) lower cost of sale.

These commercial objectives serve as a guide for our media planning, media buying and media optimisation, allowing us to make decisions not only at a site and placement level, but a channel level. This channel view on media allows us to make the most effective use of XL Airways’ budget across all online channels including search, email, display advertising, distribution and branding.

By combining our consulting offering with our media expertise we where able to deliver significant return on investment and brand growth for XL Airways. We are most proud of the fact we have helped change XL Airways business model, delivering dramatic growth on revenue and average margin while lowering cost of sale.

The chart below showcases the percent change year on year across the key commercial metrics defined back in 2004. The figures demonstrate the percentage increase or decrease for online activities only.

The impact of online marketing on XL Airways has been significant, driven by a proven online media planning, buying and optimisation model based on the belief that all media investments need to be hedged against specific commercial metrics and optimised to yield the strongest return.

About Alain Portmann

My job is simple. To inspire staff, clients and consumers.

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Creative Concepting, Design and Production Case Study : Avis

Alain Portmann — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 14:51:57 +0000

Avis UK challenged Web Liquid to concept, design and produce an online creative communication for its latest domestic offers. The offer was based on a simple proposition – “7 days for the price of 5″ and “3 days for the price of 2″. While the offer was incredibly competitive, the challenge laid in bringing the offer to life in a simple, impactful and persuasive manner for each specific car group.

Following an initial brainstorm that yielded five concepts ranging from bumper stickers to shopping baskets, our creative and strategy team identified a calendar as the most effective way of representing the value proposition of the offer. Further concept development uncovered the calendar to be an effective way of showcasing specific car group benefits such as leg room and fuel efficiency. While the calendaring design was visually effective, it required a strong call to action that supported the visual animation. The strapline “Enjoy miles more with Avis” was identified. The strapline was then tailored to convey the specific benefits of each car group – “Enjoy miles more comfort with Avis” was used for the MPV car group and “Enjoy miles more luxury with Avis” was used for the Estate car group.

The original Summer Fleet concept has become a staple creative for Avis UK, being used to promote specific seasonal tactical offers and specific car groups to UK prospects.

About Alain Portmann

My job is simple. To inspire staff, clients and consumers.

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In 2005 we generated Â£57 million in revenue and an average ROI of 20 for our clients

Matthew Cronin — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 23:25:28 +0000

With 2005 gone by and a lot of air over our wings we took a moment to reflect on our second full calendar year in business. We’ve added clients, staff and are doing work in 8 countries across all digital channels.

But beyond all that we’ve identified one metric that really matters – the success of our business is, after all, tied to the success of our clients. It’s for that reason we are very proud to have delivered over $57 million in revenue with an average ROI of 20:1 for our clients in 2005.

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Web Liquid increases conversion rates via behavioural targeting

Alain Portmann — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 12:55:33 +0000

MediaBrokers is bringing a new behavioural targeting tool to the UK next week in a bid to provide an alternative to search marketing. The solution, called MediaBroker’s Selector, lets advertisers divide users into cookie-based segments by tracking action tags on the Atlas Publisher ad network. It has been tested by Web Liquid across its client base including Hilton International.

Selector lets advertisers target customers for upselling campaigns or according to conversion – how far they have gone in a site journey. This means an advertiser can serve ‘re-messaging’ advertising to users who visited its site but failed to complete a sign-up process or sales transaction. By driving users back to their sites, advertisers can increase overall campaign conversion rates and ROI.

Selector differs from other advertiser-side behavioural targeting tools, such as Advertising.com’s Leadback, in that it’s compatible with existing Atlas DMT tracking tags. Atlas estimates its tags are used in some 60% of UK advertisers’ Web sites.

MediaBrokers MD James Aitken said that the 3.2% conversion rates achieved by the trial of Selector represent a credible alternative to pay-per-click search marketing. “We’ve put up a barrier to competitors trying to come into the space,” he said. “There are valuable impressions in unsold media, and this shifts untargeted media to targeted media.”

About Alain Portmann

My job is simple. To inspire staff, clients and consumers.

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