“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.”

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This week, as models walk down runways during New York Fashion Week, people will be tweeting their favorite looks, brands will be live streaming their shows, and bloggers will be blogging about it all, peppering the internet with exclamation points. It would be a hard won argument to say that social media hasn’t had a profound impact on fashion; but the industry was late to the game, left to play catch up with the millions that were already posting haul videos on YouTube, creating their own looks on Style Caster, or blogging about that quintessential fashion meme: the “outfit of the day. Always careful of their image, labels began reaching out to and collaborating with bloggers, while creating the requisite social media accounts. Today, brands as diverse as Burberry and Oscar De La Renta are held up as exemplars in the realm of companies leveraging social media, having quickly managed to establish their place in the conversation; still, one can’t help but get the sense that fashion brands could be doing more with all this word-of-mouth, and impact their bottom line in the process.

There are few industry events that so engross the public consciousness as Fashion Week. The most important week in the industry eight times a year renders the internet rapt with the aforementioned blogging and tweeting. And between the hyperbolic punctuation marks are authentic, no holds barred evaluations of your newest collection – collections that you will be showing the following week to buyers from the stores at which your critics will shop. By monitoring online word of mouth, the fashion industry has the ability to identify trends in the perennial conversation and use those insights to, among other things, predict future behaviors – an increasingly important proposition, given the long lead times between fashion shows and when collections begin appearing in stores). In other words, one could analyze data from Fashion Week and, the following week, tell buyer’s exactly why they should stock up on your new collection. (PRO TIP: Because the consumer said so). Using these same insights, buyers could make similarly informed decisions about the orders they place.

Inevitably, you’ll find that some pieces are being discussed more than others, and you can use these insights to decide what to bring with you to a desk side. You could also tap in to the cadres of stylish netizens sharing with each other every outfit worn, accessory they’d die for and purchases they’ve made, integrating those insights in to the development of visual merchandising – so that as soon as a shopper sees it, she can see herself in your clothes. That’s what it means bridge online and offline.

More tactically, knowing where and in what context these discussions are taking place has media planning implications: echoing the communities lexicon in your search ads, or targeting specific websites as part of a display campaign.

Let’s be clear: I’m not saying that fashion’s promotional approach to social media should be abandoned; to the contrary, there are a number of brands that are doing great things on a variety of platforms. But when you silo social media into becoming a communications or promotional tool, one finds themselves relying on those channels alone for feedback; it’s not just about Twitter and Tumblr. The Stylish Web – as I’ll call it – is bigger than that.

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It’s an increasingly important service as our recent Social Media Monitoring Survey shows, which means there’s a lot of competition for users and dollars. But we found that very few tools can suit the needs of Word-of-Mouth and Social Media researchers, marketers and brand managers who use social Media Monitoring tools to find legitimate insights that inform big decisions with serious downstream implications. In fact we started with a list of about 40 available tools and quickly narrowed it down to 5 that we believe can fit such a demanding requirement.

Our team set about putting these 5 tools through the paces in a systematic and controlled test allowing them to identify each tool’s strengths and weaknesses. The resulting analysis includes details on ease-of-use, data depth and breadth, data quality, SPAM management, resources efficiency and more. As a result, I think our team has set the bar for the Social Media Monitoring market with this buyer’s guide – highlighting important considerations buyers should keep in mind as well as pushing each tool to address the needs of the more sophisticated end of the market.

Each of the Social Media Monitoring providers that we tested deserves kudos for agreeing to take part in this buyer’s guide. Alterian, Brandwatch, MutualMind, Radian6 and Synthesio all let us take a hard look at their tools and speak honestly and objectively about our experiences. For the most part, they all shine in one way or another as we believe they represent the top-tier of the market. So this buyer’s guide truly does help the Social Media Monitoring tool buyer gain a better understanding of the tool that should best match their specific needs.

Click here to download your copy of the Social Media Monitoring Tool Buyer’s Guide.

Footnote: All of the Social Media Monitoring Tools considered for this Buyer’s Guide:

• Actionly
• Alterian
• Artesian
• Beyond the Arc
• Brand Pulse Check
• Brandwatch
• Buddy Media
• Buzzworthy
• Caleris
• Cision
• Converseon
• Crimson Hexagon
• CustomScoop
• Echosonar
• Evoapp
• General Sentiment
• Hubspot
• InfoGlutton
• Jitter Jam
• Lithium (Scoutlabs)
• Meltwater Buzz
• Moreover Tech
• MutualMind
• Nielsen Buzzmetrics
• Position2
• Post Rank
• Radian6
• Raven Tools
• SaS
• Shoutlet
• Simplify 360
• Social Eye
• Social Mention
• Social Rain
• Social Report
• Sprout Social
• Syncapse
• Synthesio
• Sysomos
• Tracebuzz
• Trackur
• Viral Heat
• Visible Technologies
• Vocus

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Yet as with any opportunity there is a risk that the potential of what these technologies can bring becomes misconstrued. As a result people end up with the impression that the technologies alone can presently tell them, with enough accuracy as to be deemed credible and trustworthy, all they need to know about where their brand stands in the digital space.

Social media monitoring tools are entirely automated. A user enters a query, and the tool is effectively let loose to track and gather conversation across the web that matches said query. Once data has been collected, the tools conduct a plethora of analyses, visualizing the findings in pleasant looking dashboards that report on a variety of metrics. The vendors of these tools purport that, from these dashboard, marketers are able to glean the insights necessary to develop strategies that will enable them to engage their customers in a manner that is “relevant” and “speak your customers’ language”. This is a fallacy. But it is a claim that has led some people to rely solely on the automated functions of these tools, at the expense of careful analysis of and human interaction with the data.

Conversation is entirely too complex and nuanced a form of communication for a piece of technology to interpret at this time. Even we as human beings have verbal (and textual) misunderstandings – just think about how many fights have started thanks to a simple misinterpretation of what somebody had said (or written) to them. Computers don’t get sarcasm, the calling card of internet discourse. They’re unable to decipher the meaning behind cultural references or understand things in context. Put simply, computers can’t show you the meaning behind what your customers are saying, or how you should react to what the data tells you.

Take sentiment analysis, a standard offering of all monitoring tools. Through a variety of natural language processing and machine learning techniques, sentiment analysis is allegedly able to illustrate the emotion inherent in a given piece of text. In the case of social media monitoring tools, this is typically reported in terms of the conversation’s polarity (ie, positive and negative). As impressive as this sounds, the accuracy of these tools is less than stellar and, due to the reasons given above, typically requires a human to go in and correct the software’s error.

What all of this means, of course, is that in order to get the full value out of any of these tools it is essential that the data be validated by hand and that the subsequent analysis is both rigorous and based on a solid methodology. Surely a business’s ability to devote resources to an admittedly labour intensive task as this depends on the business. But when one considers the breadth of knowledge that social media monitoring tools make available, it’s not hard to see the value in putting aside resources to dive deep in to the database and glean actionable insights that you can then work into your existing strategies, or develop new approaches entirely, across all functions of your business.

“You would need to be situated outside life, and at the same time to know life as well as someone- many people, everyone- who has lived it, to be allowed even to touch on the problem of the value of life.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Social media monitoring tools have been positioned by some as finally giving businesses the chance to solve their customers’ problems. Yes, the tools allow us to situate ourselves outside the digital lives of our customers but, similar to what Nietzsche says above, we can only begin to address our customers’ problems when we as marketers mix what our customers are telling us with what we know as consumers (read:humans) ourselves, like how disappointing it is to get bad service. Or what it feels like to fall in love with a product.

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Even more than in the prior Excel posts, the accompanying excel file will be critical to clarifying many of the following tips. Link to download:

Excel Tips for Marketers – Part 3 Excel File

So, let’s get started!

GENERAL TIPS

Using Excel to Build URLs for Media Campaigns

We frequently find our clients prefer Google Analytics, and if you are only running a Google Adwords campaign on the paid media side, you merely have to hook the two platforms together with a single check box. But what if you have more than just Google Search or Google Display Network in your media mix? Google offers all Analytics users the option of manually tagging incoming paid media using a certain set of URL parameters (more information here). Using Excel, one can quickly build all the URLs one needs for the rest of their media mix (Facebook advertising, Ad Networks, Microsoft Bing, etc).

The Excel demonstration file attached to this blog post outlines the actual steps required to take landing pages and media campaign information and turn it into click through URLs for your ad server of choice (whether it be Microsoft AdCenter, Mediaplex or Facebook’s adserving platform). The functions are relatively simple for this process; it’s mainly a matter of splitting out what changes and what stays the same for each click through URL, followed by a large number of concatenations (my preference is the ampersand connector over CONCATENATE(), as outlined in Excel Tips for Marketers – Part 2)

The end result of using Excel and URL parameters is the ability to see all your paid media broken out in Google Analytics right in line with the more commonly reported traffic sources:

Using Excel for SEO: Parsing URLs & Backlinks

Just the other day we provided a backlink profile for a new client of ours (a fairly standard SEO-related piece of work that we do standard). The results came back in URL form, namely a domain (such as “www.makerfaire.com”), followed by a slug (such as “/newyork/2010”). By separating the domain from the slug, one is able to begin several interesting different types of analysis. When one has just the domains, one can aggregate them to see which domains are particularly prone to linking back to the website on which the backlink analysis was done. With the slugs, one can aggregate them to see which pieces of content are most likely to be linked to. Next, a textual analysis of that most-linked-to-content can lead one towards an SEO content development strategy that better matches the audience of the website on which the backlink analysis was done.

The formulas in the accompanying spreadsheet may look rather complicated, but they become that way due largely to the myriad of minor ways a URL can be written that would break many an unsuspecting MID / FIND formula combination. Here is a more basic example of a MID / FIND formula combination that extracts the domain (~95% of the time without error*):

=MID([Cell to look in], 8, FIND(“/”, [Cell to look in], 8 ) – 8 )

*The domain has to have a URL that begins with “http://”, and follows with either a “/” or a slug.

Cross-worksheet Validation in Excel

If you use a reference to identify the list of items a cell needs to validate against, that reference has to be on the same worksheet as the cell for which you are trying to setup validation. This first time I encountered this I wanted to pull my hair out. Luckily, it turns out there is a better solution: Named Ranges.

Being able to store the list of valid values a cell can have on a worksheet separate from that cell is hugely helpful when setting up Excel workbooks where the input tables and the output tables are on separate worksheets. By using this technique, one can lock users from modifying output/presentation/results worksheets while still allowing them to add and remove categories/values for VLOOKUP() and SEARCH().

The example outlined in the demonstration Excel file attached to this is straightforward, as most of the work is in menus and not formulas. The one formula involved is this:

=OFFSET([Cell reference to the first item in the list of valid cell values], 0, 0, COUNTA([Cell range reference to all the items in the list of valid cell values), 1)

FUNCTIONS

Histograms with FREQUENCY()

Histograms are wonderful ways of simply showing the distribution of a set of data, whether it’s days during the year above a certain volume of revenue, or in the example spreadsheet, the mozRank of the websites that mentioned the client’s brand.

There are two critical aspects of FREQUENCY() not directly mentioned in the demonstration Excel spreadsheet. First, one has to select a range of cells that is the same size as the cell range that defines the buckets, before one begins typing the formula. Second, one has to press CMD+SHFT+ENTER when they finish typing the formula rather than just ENTER. This is because FREQUENCY() is known as an array formula (I discuss array formulas in the first installment of Microsoft Excel Tips for Marketers, and this is where I learned how to use them).

MORE ADVANCED TIPS

Microsoft Excel + Wordle

Wordle is an amazing, free tool for generating word clouds. Word clouds are a neat way of visualizing the frequency of individual words in a larger body of text. We use them as a method for analyzing word of mouth data, and discovering what the critical emergent topics are in the conversation that may affect our clients. Here is an example word cloud created with Wordle using the text of this blog post:

Simple word clouds can be created by selecting "Create" on Wordle’s home page, but we are concerned with the "Advanced" section. In the advanced section one is able to bring Microsoft Excel to bear to help create, in this example, word clouds that color topics by their sentiment.

The starting data is fairly standard Social Media monitoring (our take) data, from an aspect of our current monitoring software that allows us to identify trending topics. This monitoring tool also analyzes the sentiment of each instance of the discussion on each topic, so we are able to get percentages of positive, neutral and negative commentary.

The key step in this process is not actually turning the sentiment numbers into Red/Green/Blue color values, but the step in between where we index the positive, neutral and negative sentiment percentages in order to produce actually meaningful color values (as opposed to ending up with all brown/grey words in the final product). The basic formula is (example here is for positive sentiment):

=(([Topic’s % positive] – [smallest % positive out of all topics]) / ([largest % positive out of all topics] – [smallest % positive out of all topics])

This indexing method maps the smallest positive % in the range to 0, and the largest to 1, and maps all the remaining topics’ positive %s in between 0 and 1, and levels the playing field such that, for example, a 1% to 4% jump in negative mentions is noticeable compared to a 27% to 40% positive mentions.

Many of the above tips involve more than just Excel formulas, and as such I can’t recommend enough downloading the excel file accompanying this post and trying some things out yourself. On the flip side, I know not all of us are interested in rushing home and spending our free time in Excel, so, if you post your questions, comments, grievances in the comments we’ll see if we can figure them out!

Prior Excel tips posts: Part 1, and Part 2.

And that’s all for now, but there will be more!

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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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Last December, Steve Rahr, a pharmaceutical mogul turned philanthropist, donated half a million dollars to help those in Africa and India affected by AIDS. But the lives of sick children weren’t the only things saved that day. The $500,000 donation also managed to single-handedly save a poorly executed fundraising campaign from falling short of its mark.

The premise of the Digital Death campaign was relatively straight-forward: a handful of the most popular celebrities on the social web were to commit digital suicide on World AIDS Day (December 1^st), completely cutting off all communication via Facebook and Twitter. They would not “come back to life” until their fans and followers had donated a total of $1 million. Organised by Keep A Child Alive, Alicia Keys’ charity, the money raised would be used to provide medical support to African and Indian children and their families affected by HIV and AIDS.

Most of those involved thought this would only last a couple of days; after all, who wouldn’t be willing to make a donation to help sick children AND have their favorite celebrities start tweeting away again? As it turns out, Ms. Keys and her celebrity friends grossly underestimated their influence – five days in to the campaign, donations hadn’t even hit $300,000. Then, miraculously, Rahr came in and saved the day, much to the glee of Ryan Seacrest and the many other Digital Death participants.

In the days leading up to the donation, myriad social media pundits and experts took to their blogs, claiming that the reason the campaign was doing so poorly was due to the inherently egotistical nature of the concept or that there was no natural fit between the campaign and the celebrities involved. Maybe so, but the bigger problem with this campaign is that it comprised a bunch of different tactics, all while eschewing any apparent strategy.

The use of celebrities in building awareness around a cause or advertising campaign is a tactic that organizations have been using for years – sometimes these endorsements even lead to the creation of new brands. But the biggest problem with the Digital Death campaign was that there was no context to what these celebrities were doing. Indeed, the campaign was supported by mainstream media coverage, traditional and digital ads, and a micro-site – things all aimed at spreading the word, as it were – but they did nothing to bring things together. Instead what it did was serve to make the message work harder. Keep A Child Alive, the organization behind Digital Death, has a fairly active presence on Twitter but that doesn’t matter – this campaign was meant to be celebrity-driven. Simply sending out a tweet saying that you’re going away for a while until $1 million is raised isn’t exactly going to rally the troops, especially when those on Twitter that follow the celebrities involved don’t know why they should be donating money in the first place. If KCA would have sat down to think about this a little more they would have realized that, strategically, to build up awareness for this campaign, it would have to be done by the celebrities themselves.

And so the issue of influence is raised.  Among other things, a topic that any social media expert loves to talk about is “connecting with influencers” and the ways that brands can use them to their advantage. The rise in popularity by tools such as Klout, also point to a larger trend in the industry towards this. But as we saw with the Digital Death campaign, simply using a celebrity as part of any type of initiative won’t do anything unless it’s both relevant and unique. Twitter users that follow celebrities are familiar with them in very specific ways so rather than cutting off communications, perhaps these celebrities should have remained active, enlightening those that follow them to the strife and hardships these children and their families face even without having to deal with HIV/AIDS – and then driving the point home by shedding light on specific examples (remember, concreteness helps things stick and what’s more concrete than specific anecdotes about a young child dying from AIDS and their families’ subsequent struggles in dealing with it?).

A lot of people look to “influencers” in the social space as all encompassing and a sure thing to success. But the problem with these influencers is that, after a while, it gets old – just look at the slowly increasing resistance to fashion bloggers. The same thing is true with attempting to “go viral”. If a brand or organization is to be successful in social media, then the view must be long-term. Quick forays on Twitter and Facebook just aren’t going to work.

A strategy is absolutely crucial to the success of any social media program – especially in the case of non-profits like Keep a Child Alive where the difference between success and failure means the difference between life and death. Social media has been successful in helping a number of cause marketing initiatives achieve success – Pepsi Refresh is the low-hanging fruit of examples, but there are plenty of others – but they’ve come as the result of long-term commitments, not weeklong campaigns.

In Part I of this series, we discussed how social media experts have watered down what could potentially be an extremely powerful tool for business and today we saw the impact that tactic-centric engagement in the medium can have. In Part III we will be discussing alternative solutions to the way most brands currently use social media,

Until then, what were your thoughts on the campaign? Did you donate? Can you think of any others that fell short? Or that did well in your eyes? Let me know in the comments.

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Marketers continue to become, as a whole, an increasingly numerate lot. (What’s numeracy? It’s the opposite of innumeracy.)

It’s inevitable that we’ll wake up in a cold sweat every so often, facing up to the reality that some consumer behaviors can’t be measured intuitively, certain audiences just can’t be segmented, and the occasional performance metric actually does nothing to tell the story of how a brand fits into the marketplace.

Recently we discussed the ROPO effect (research online, purchase offline) and how a substantial portion of purchase behaviors initiated online will end up in an immeasurable black hole, never to be spoken of again.

While Google is pinning our economic hopes on an e-commerce led recovery, let’s not forget that offline activity still makes up the lion’s share of purchase behavior.

So if we’re going to speculate about consumer behavior, one channel is more free of bias than the others. We call it word of mouth.

Online Feedback Channels

Thousands of years ago, before the impression and the click, the earliest humans survived in part by specializing and bartering in hunter-gatherer societies. Word of mouth drove many of their decisions, similar in nature to the decisions consumers make today about where to live, what to eat, or with whom to do business.

The social media landscape is, in 2011, the truest manifestation of online word-of-mouth behavior — and in a ROPO context, this brings tremendous value to the search marketer’s table.

Take one example of a very obvious online feedback channel: product review sites. It’s not just about the ratings; these sites are loaded with very specific feedback coming from reliable sources (contributors already volunteer their time to post, so they are self-motivated to represent their opinions accurately).

These sites are a magnet for high volumes of consumer-oriented search queries. Here’s a sample of some popular review sites, followed by a measure of their online footprint in organic search:

• Epinions: 58.3 million pages in Google’s search index
• Yelp: 10.3 million
• CNET Reviews: 9.1 million
• Bizrate: 7.3 million
• TripAdvisor: 2.4 million
• Nextag: 1.9 million
• Yahoo Shopping: 1.6 million

And it doesn’t end there. Review sites are just one piece of the puzzle.

Consumers post the same type of content in forums and communities, in blog comments, on Facebook and Twitter, and many other online properties. These too are indexed by search engines (for the most part), and further fill out the online word of mouth picture.

If we expect consumer trends to hold steady, then we can expect that consumer activity driven by word-of-mouth will usually culminate in an offline resolution. It’s the ROPO effect at work.

So marketers will need to ask themselves, “Are we OK with all these offline purchases, and we simply want to better leverage the trend? Or are we really looking to push our customers toward online (e-commerce) destinations?”

On the heels of this key strategic distinction, here’s how to target the social media audience in search engines, guiding them in their offline consumer behavior:

1. Monitor Online Conversation

What are the most common concerns about your brand? What are its biggest assets, in the eyes of consumers? This provides strategic guidance in marketing communications, media strategy, customer service, product development… the list goes on and on.

A number of brand monitoring tools are available to acquire this type of brand insight.

2. Dig Into the ROPO Pain Points

What are the most common roadblocks to online purchase? How do consumers feel about their offline alternatives?

The volume and sentiment of this segment of consumer dialogue creates a unique profile representing your brand’s ROPO audience.

3. Strike back in Search

Use search engines to guide consumers to your preferred destination, online or offline. Here are a few search marketing tactics worth a try:

• ROPO-targeted creative: Flaunt your glowing testimonials right in the ad copy, with an incentive to buy either online or offline.
• Alternative keyword strategy: Target keywords that include the brand name tied to modifiers like ratings, reviews, etc. Also use on competitive brands (the word-of-mouth research will clue you in to your competitive advantage, which you can use right in the ad copy).
• AdWords seller rating extensions: Managed from your Google Merchant Center account, you can show searchers your pristine record right in the search results.
• Product availability: If you’re a brick-and-mortar retailer, you can set up a data feed to dynamically update product inventory right in the search results.
• Cherrypick the foot traffic: A lot of people use keywords like “store locator“; this is a natural link between online and offline purchase behavior, and a good opportunity to step in and bridge the gap with a nice incentive.

Summary

Selling product is the bottom line, and the environment in which those sales revenues are generated generally takes a backseat. As brands evolve, however, they are forced to look to new growth channels within certain cost boundaries.

Staffing, inventory, rent, insurance — these are just a few of the costs associated with maintaining an offline presence, and can provide a stimulus to increasing a brand’s online presence.

Measurement challenges will continue to be a bottleneck to understanding ROPO trends, but with analytical tactics aimed at extending reach (e.g. mobile search) as well as deepening consumer insight (the word-of-mouth approach), marketers continue to inch closer to clarity.

About Paul Burani

Paul Burani - Partner, Web Liquid Group. Connect with me on Google+

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A lot of people have been complaining lately about “social media experts”. The Telegraph recently published a tongue-in-cheek profile on them and the sudden popularity of the The Anti Social Media blog suggests that the UK paper wasn’t alone. You’ve all seen the videos. But while there’s plenty of people complaining about it, nobody’s talking about what led to this in the first place.

A few years ago, the hangover from the social networking craze passed and people began to seriously look at – and question – the viability of social media for business. Early proponents of the space claimed that it had the potential to completely change the way businesses reach out to their consumers (which it has), while the naysayers said there was no way that it could deliver a monetary ROI, and that you couldn’t measure it anyway (which it does and you can). Whatever the case, the debate was heated.

Enter the likes of Mashable, Social Media Examiner, and Joel Comm. Blogs and “consultants” that seemingly came out of nowhere and were thrust to the forefront of the debate. To combat the naysayers they would blindly claim that social media was a golden gun for business and that platforms like Twitter and Facebook were its silver bullets. Tawdry Top Ten lists of the “best” ways brands could engage and build communities; paltry promises of immense growth. This is how they would defend social media as a business tool. And it worked.

It worked because these so-called experts were able to tap into the marketing community’s perpetual desire for an end-all, be-all solution.  As a result, people with little experience outside of reading articles like this landed jobs at both big brands and small businesses alike. It was all about Facebook discounts and Twitter giveaways to increase the number of fans and followers a brand had. If these numbers went up, the consultants were able to show their clients “results”, but nobody knew what to do next.

What these “experts” took for granted – and perhaps what some of these marketers didn’t realise – was that to participate, never mind succeed, in social media, one needs an identity. When it comes to brands participating in social media, only the brands themselves know what their objectives are in terms of how they want to be perceived. And even though in many cases a brand’s identity tends to be dictated by the community, the inherent nature of social media as an interactive medium affords brands a much better opportunity to get their core message across than, say, a print advertisement. But maximizing this opportunity starts not with tactics chosen because somebody else said it was a best practice, but a strategy that lays out how a brand intends to create an environment in which consumers can experience the brand.

Sure, if a brand starts a Facebook page and Twitter account and tells its customers, there’s bound to be a few thousand of them that are going to fan or follow you – although it’s telling that this may not be the case anymore. But this is the internet we’re talking about, where boredom sets in quick – people are constantly in need of something new to do online. Regardless of whether or not a brand has 100 or 100,000 followers, then, these consumers aren’t going to do anything with a brand unless the brand gives the consumer a reason to. After all, it is social media and you wouldn’t send somebody else to a social event in your place. So why should brands?

In most cases, the non-believers were proven right as a result, leaving a sour taste in marketers’ mouths. So when the second wave of social media adoption came, most businesses took it upon themselves to handle their social media activities on their own and played it safe. What we’re left with, then, is a watered down version of a powerful tool and an environment in which people are too preoccupied with tactical implementation, rather than the strategic implications of social media. Instead of writing about the industry in the same way that we explain to toddlers why things are the way they are, we should be talking about social POS systems and their ability to make location based social networks legit, measureable platforms to market businesses with or the benefits of WOM monitoring in tailoring your approach to engaging in the space.

Take a look at the tweet at the top of this post. The person that tweeted this, according to the resume on her website, has worked at a variety of “legacy” media companies in the US as a social media strategist and is, apparently, “generally within two degrees of separation from any media company in the USA”. This is what is wrong with the social media space.

In my next blog post, we’ll be looking at concrete examples of the effects that all of this has had on brands’ efforts in this space. In the meantime, let me know in the comments what your thoughts are on all of this? Have you had similar experiences?

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How can insights from Word-of-Mouth and Social Media be used to create tactical marketing opportunities on Search Engines?

About Paul Burani

Paul Burani - Partner, Web Liquid Group. Connect with me on Google+

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Where can I… watch movies online?
What is there… to do in Boston?
How much… does lasik cost?
Why do… clothes cling in the dryer?

Start typing a query into Google, and sometimes you’ll be surprised by what you find. It’s been finishing our sentences ever since Google Suggest (now known as Autocomplete) became a default function of the search experience in 2004.

As personalized search has grown in complexity, the appearance of these suggestions now begs the question: just how good has Google become at anticipating our needs?

Actually, not that good. While it might be a little eerie to see a suggested query that actually mirrors what we’re thinking, we can take comfort in the fact that we’re a dynamic species which constantly takes its cues from the world unfolding around us. If Google knows all our past queries, that alone wouldn’t help it anticipate our future ones.

And yet, there would be a tremendous commercial opportunity if search engines could adapt to do just that. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 82 percent of Internet traffic starts on a search engine. Does this suggest that the overwhelming majority of digital marketers’ opportunities reside in search?

Hardly. The problem with search behavior: it’s rarely as objective as we’d like it to be.

Far too much information about the searchers’ motivations and decision-making processes is lost in the nanoseconds elapsed in a typical search query. One crystal-clear metric, however, does get to the heart of this matter: search query length.

In 2003, a team of researchers from Rutgers University published a study called “Query Length in Interactive Information Retrieval,” in which they tested the relationship between query length and search effectiveness in interactive information retrieval (what the lay person calls “using Google”). What they found was that the length of search queries correlated positively with the user’s satisfaction over the quality of their search results. In other words, the more words you type into Google, the more likely you are to be happy with the results.

This study was one of the first indications that search engine users had evolved from the primitive 1990s into sophisticated information-gatherers, and that search engines were rising to the challenge. The two were speaking to each other in plain language, not some cryptic code.

A year after the Rutgers study, iProspect found that the percentage of four-word search referrals had tripled over the prior year, and for marketers, these longer phrases were converting at a higher rate than their shorter counterparts.

The downside of this evolution, from the search engines’ perspective, is that it has begun to erode, not improve, their ability to anticipate search behavior. By 2008, 20 percent of all the queries on Google were either brand new (keywords never before queried in the past) or hadn’t been queried in the previous sixth months. By 2010, that number is up to 33 percent (or higher) of all queries based on brand new keywords.

The implications of this trend are profound. Today, most search marketers trade on their ability to pore through reams of data at the outset of the keyword research process. Only with seed lists of eye-popping volume could a campaign ever have a reliable foundation.

The web’s vast array of keyword tools are the go-to resource for this process of building a keyword seed list. But those databases tend to be built from existing search engines, using information from *ahem* past queries.

Two years ago, this process could still give you a lock on up to 80 percent of the search opportunity. Now that number is just 67 percent.

What would happen if this pattern were to continue? It might not be long before the split approached 50-50.

Factor in the Pew statistic, about 82 percent of all Internet traffic beginning on a search engine, and the plot thickens:

The deduction we make here is that if the search engine remains prominent across the landscape of digital properties generating traffic across the web (i.e., the trend reflected in the Pew statistic holds up over time), then traditional search marketers will soon be in for a shock.

Search marketing experts such as Aaron Wall and Stoney deGeyter have always urged keyword researchers to extend beyond just what they can get from the tools. They recommend scouring forums and blog comments, plowing through the thesaurus, even interviewing customers to generate an augmented seed list around which to build a campaign.

It’s an arduous process that increases an already daunting workload. So it’s no surprise that agencies and consultants looking to turn a profit in SEM might cut corners at this point in the process.

The next wave of winners in the search game will be the ones who find efficient ways to marry raw data from consumer research with sound campaign design and management methodology. Search is as much about customer service as it is about marketing — and both essential business functions revolve around the customers’ intent.

Heading into 2011 and beyond, being found will be just as important to brand integrity as being searched.

If you don’t speak the consumer’s language, how will they ever find you?

About Paul Burani

Paul Burani - Partner, Web Liquid Group. Connect with me on Google+

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The study determined that among women who consider themselves stylish, while still skeptical about paying full price (11% agreed that they “usually pay full price”), the bigger concern is one of durability, with 80% of those surveyed saying that they are “willing to pay more for clothing that will last more than one season.” Other findings include the fact that 15% of style-conscious women account for 70% of luxury spending in apparel, accessories and beauty, with 55% of apparel spend and 40% of accessories spend occurring at specialty or vertical retailers over department stores.

This is all very interesting information, and the study sheds light on other interesting characteristics of the “style-conscious” woman, but how insightful are these findings and what sort of value does it bring to marketers? And of the insight one might gain from studies like this, is it actionable?

For example, towards the end of the study, six unique consumer profiles were developed based on the survey results and suggestions were provided on “how to find” them. According to the study the top two types, “fashion mavens” and “classic professionals”, visit beauty websites and blogs and utilize social media in a limited fashion. As Vanessa Friedman put it on her Material World blog, “[A]s far as I can tell, this doesn’t really tell us much of anything about the shopper.”

It would be much more valuable for marketers to know which exact beauty websites and blogs these customer types are visiting. What are they specifically talking about? What are their concerns? Are they advocating your brand or dismissing it? If their use of social media is limited, to what extent are they using it and on which properties? And so on.

A Word-of-Mouth (WOM) monitoring program can answer these questions and, in a lot of cases, bring to light certain issues or topics that you might not have known to look for. It allows you to know what people are saying about the brand, when they’re saying it, where they’re saying it and what they’re saying. In other words, it serves as an ongoing, real-time situation analysis that can provide marketers with much more actionable insights than an industry analysis. Gaining “ground level” perspective on where a company stands with customers relative to the competition, for example, leaves companies better prepared not just from a marketing perspective but in myriad other business functions. (For an example of this, you can check out the work that we conducted for Ramada Jarvis.)

The sheer reach of social networks, and their ability to spread information across the web, has profoundly shifted the marketplace, empowering consumers like never before. Word-of-mouth (WOM) research is invaluable not only because it provides marketers with further insight as to who their customer is, but also by better allowing brands to know exactly what the needs of their target audiences are and how they should deliver on those needs. That way, everybody wins.

About Ben Semmar

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Initially, we were only able to find this content in PDF and other image formats. The list is not necessarily exhaustive, but it’s nonetheless a helpful resource — and for anyone looking to put this resource to use, wouldn’t it be nice to have a text-based version with links to all the companies/technologies mentioned? We thought so too… so here it is.

(Was your company left off the list? Let us know and we’ll add you.)

Agencies
Web Liquid Group
Omnicom Group
WPP
Publicis
Razorfish
Interpublic
Havas
Aegis
MDC-Partners
AKQA
iCrossing
Innovation Interactive
Dentsu
Hakuhodousa
AT&T Interactive
WebVisible
ReachLocal
Yodle

Ad Servers
Doubleclick
Eyeblaster
Atlas
Pointroll
Openx
Zedo
Adtech

Media Buying Platforms
Omnicon Trading Desk
B3
Vivaki
Atom
Cadreon
Adnetik
Varick Media Management

Creative Optimization
Teracent
Snapads
Struq
Choicestream
Dotomi
Adready
Tumri
ADISN
Adroit Interactive
Dapper

Analytics
Omniture
Coremetrics
WebTrends
Marketshare
Google Analytics
Unica
Flurry

DSPs
Mediamath
Invitemedia
X+1
Turn
Dataxu
Appnexus
Efficient Frontier
Triggit
Adbuyer.Com
The Trade Desk
Xa.Net

Data Optimization
House of Kaizen
Aggregate Knowledge
Datran Media
Quantcast
Jovian Data
Adchemy
Permuto
Redaril
Brilig
Bizo

Verification/Attribution
Doubleverify
Anchor Intelligence
Ad-Juster
Convertro
Tagman
Click Forensics
Adsafe
Mpire
Vizu
Adometry
ClearSaleing

Data Exchanges/Aggregators
Bluekai
Almondnet
Magnetic
Demdex
Rapleaf
Exelate
Acerno
Track Simple

Ad Exchanges
Doubleclick
Rightmedia
adECN
Advertising.Com
Ad Desk
ContextWeb
Adbrite
Adap.tv
Openx

Data Suppliers
Experian
Acxiom
Datalogix
Targusinfo
Infogroup
eBay
Expedia
IRI

Ad Networks- Horizontal
Yahoo!
AOL Advertising
Google
Microsoft Media Network
Tribalfusion
24-7 Real Media
Audience Network
Valueclick
Undertone
Burstmedia
CPX Interactive
Casale Media
Interclick
Traffic Marketplace
AdDynamix
Adtegrity
ShortTail Media
Brand.Net

Ad Networks- Video/Rich Media
Sprout
Tremor Media
BBE
Videoegg
Brightroll
Yume
Eyewonder
Adconion
Vibrant Media
Scanscout

Ad Networks- Vertical
Travel Ad Network
Net Shelter
Gorilla Nation
Sportgenic
Jumpstart
Idgtechnetwork
Glam
Intergi Entertainment
Federated Media
Media6Degrees

Ad Networks- Targeted
Specific Media
33Across
Collective Media
Lucid Media
Turn
Lotame
Audience Science
Pulse360

Ad Networks- Performance
Epic Advertising
Rocketfuel
Moxymedia
Adteractive
Adconion
Adknowledge
Commission Junction
Marchex
Datran Media
Tatto Media
Vantage Media
Hydra
Theuseful
Neverblue
Linkshare

Ad Networks- Mobile
AdMob
Quattro Wireless
Millennial Media
Jumptap
Greystripe
Mojiva
Amobee
Inmobi
Crisp Wireless
Transpera

Publisher Tools
Fat Tail
Peer39
Lijit
Yieldex
Yieldbuild
Yieldbot

Yield Optimization
Rubicon Project
Pubmatic
AdMeld

Sharing Data/Social Tools
Facebook
Sharethis
Clearspring
Gigya

Click below for links to relevant agency/consulting services:

Site Conversion Optimization
Continuous improvement of conversion by focusing on dynamic landing pages, conversion optimization and site analytics.

Particle Data Intelligence
Our data intelligence platform used to store, optimize, verify, report and forecast digital marketing campaigns.

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.

About Paul Burani

Paul Burani - Partner, Web Liquid Group. Connect with me on Google+

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While most digital marketers embrace the wealth of data generated by their campaigns, one of their biggest challenges is to leverage that data beyond the specific channel in which it is generated.  It can be a great frustration to make sense of numbers at the highest, most general level – but within that problem lies a significant opportunity.

Let’s use discount wine retail as an example.  A store owner may be proud of their e-commerce site, but if they’re not connecting with the clientele on a more personal level, they’re leaving a lot of potential value untapped.  This is frequently a motivator for having a presence in social media.  Adding a blog as a complement to the e-commerce experience would be a great way to build a presence in these word-of-mouth (WOM) channels.  We know that WOM is highly trusted by consumers (McKinsey estimates it is the primary factor in up to 50% of purchase decisions), but how do we identify the relevant conversations going on?

Tapping into related search query activity is one easy way to do this.  Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool is a free resource offering a robust view of how frequently people search for different keywords.  Let’s take it for a spin.

[Note: Earlier in May, Google updated its AdWords Keyword Tool interface.  You’ll find it is easier to use the old version; just click Previous Interface.]

1)    Go to the Keyword Tool and type “discount wine”.  (Make sure “Use synonyms” is checked, and both options beneath “Filter my results” are unchecked.)

2)    You’ll get two lists (Related terms, Additional terms).  Click “Add all” for each, so that both show in the green section on the right.

3)    Output that list to a text file; this is now your Seed List.  You’ll then take this and drop it back in where you typed “discount wine” beforehand.  (This time, make sure “Use synonyms” is unchecked, and “Don’t show ideas for new keywords” is checked.)

4)    Export this new list to CSV, and open in Excel.

5)    Extract “discount” and “wine” from the whole list (first, go for related terms like “discounts,” “discounted,” “wines”).  This leaves you with the most common search modifiers related to discount wine.

6)    Re-sort the list by keyword to remove blanks, and sort again, descending by Global Monthly Search Volume.  At this point, it’s useful to cap the list to only those terms with a search volume X or higher (for “discount wine” I used 1,000 as my cutoff).

7)    Next to the search volume column, divide the number by 1,000 for each term.  You’ll understand why in a second.  Let’s call this Adjusted Search Volume.

8)    Create a column next to the keywords where you fuse each term with a space (use the CONCATENATE function with the keyword followed by a space in between quotes.  Example: =concatenate(A1,” “)

9)    Now create one last column for your final output, where you multiply the keyword by the number shown in Adjusted Search Volume.  This will give each keyword the proper relativity in the finished product.  You can use the REPT function in Excel to do this.  It will look something like this:

10)    Take that output and drop it into your favorite tag cloud generator (at Web Liquid, we like Wordle).  And voila’, here’s a visualization of the top search modifiers related to discount wine (click to enlarge):

Is the word “red” cluttering things up too much?  You can go back, and paste everything but the top keyword.  Watch how the cloud changes:

Still not inspired?  You could just limit to the terms that have monthly search query volumes between 1,000 and 10,000:

This process offers an objective, relative view of the conversation surrounding a root keyword, as reflected in search activity.  It’s a very scalable approach as well, with room for conversion, geography, seasonality and other filters.

When adding search-enabled WOM insights to the other creative priorities surrounding new content development, the net result is an airtight method for populating an editorial calendar and positioning its content for maximum visibility in search engines.

About Paul Burani

Paul Burani - Partner, Web Liquid Group. Connect with me on Google+

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Download “The Long and Short of URL Shorteners” in PDF format.

About Paul Burani

Paul Burani - Partner, Web Liquid Group. Connect with me on Google+

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So why does traditional online advertising not work in social media? First, most consumers decisions on social media sites take place through the referral of friends. Case in point, 78% of respondents to the 2007 Nielsen Global Survey on Word of Mouth indicate consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising. Second, the push marketing approach does not apply to niche, fast-moving audiences found in social media sites. Three, the mindset of social media users is driven by self promotion and community (social engagement) in order to connect there has to be an exchange that is of value to the user. If you chose to advertise on social media sites be conscious of the need to give that audience something of value as opposed to a advertising message.

Twiter, Facebook, Flyertalk and thousands of community boards, blogs and social media platforms empower consumers to communicate, network, contribute and make decisions about their everyday life. The gold dust of social media is consumer generated content and the sentiment it reflects about brands dynamic word of mouth and conversation. The question is how to indentify, harness, measure and act upon the conversational gold dust. In simple terms the challenge is to define and tie key performance indicators to the content and sentiment being measured.

The first thing to understand is that social media and consumer generated content serves as a repository and public record of conversations and consumer sentiment about a brand. A number of companies (Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Brand Watch, Market Sentinel) have popped up offering technology to capture those conversations for analysis but much of the application of that technology is still quite tactical or focused on brand reputation management. In fact, the consumer generated insight research opportunity is to use that insight on a regular basis and with quality marketing-based analysis to derive valuable insights that can improve marketing communications.

In our experience, the single most important measurement metric for social media is a variation of Net Promoter Score ©. Creator, Fred Reichheld of Bain & Co., measured the number of consumer “Promoters” (those who would recommend a product or services) and “Detractors” (those who actively discourage the use of a product or service) of hundreds of companies across many categories finding that on average the NPS leader grows at 2.5x. While the Net Promoter Score © metric can provide a foundation metric, it is important to define additional metrics aimed at benchmarking the contribution of social media against other channels of consumer interaction.

Our work with Avis and OpenSkies on the social media space has allowed us to define a measurement approach to consumer generated content; based on five measurement modules.

1. Involvement
This set of metrics is aimed at understanding the propensity of involvement for either your own social media environment (community board, blog) or third party social media sites that drive users to your site. Assigning a unique referring ID to your social media property or third party social sites within your site analytics tool (Web Trends and Google Analytics) should facilitate this data.
- Site visits
- Time spent
- Pages viewed
- New vs. returning users
- Navigational path

2. Engagement
These metrics are aimed at understanding the specific actions and behaviors of users. Every engagement such as a comment should be equated to a call centre engagement or store visit. This approach allows for social media engagement to be viewed as part of the overall customer journey, providing a degree of benchmarking.
- Commentary volume
- Frequency of comments
- Sources of commentary
- Commentary creator segments
- Topics/Subjects

3. Sentiment
This set of metrics is aimed at identifying changes in positive and negative feedback across time and against competitors. This information can be used by Customer Service teams to proactively address specific issues being openly discussed by consumers.

- Net Promoter Index variation

4. Propagation
This set of metrics is aimed at indentifying the distribution of social media content and its impact on how other consumers find and participate on the discussions about your brand. A key metric is search engine indexing which is related to the incremental impact of natural search traffic and visibility derived from social media.
- Citations
- Trackbacks
- Search Engine indexing

5. Transaction
While not applicable to all brands, transactions from social media can be measured by leveraging third party ad-serving and site analytics data. Establishing a control test against your average transactional site data can be an effective way of identifying variations on behavior and value.
- Registrations
- Shopping cart instances
- Conversion rate
- Revenue per transaction
- Revenue by user

We have been working with one of our travel clients to define the contribution of social media to their bottom line. Our approach was to benchmark revenue by blog visitors versus non blog visitors. The results are not surprising and have strengthened our clients belief on the value of social media. The average transaction value of a blog customer is 1.16 times higher than average site user.

Alain Portmann, author of  ”Measuring the gold dust of media” is Web Liquid’s Founding Partner, Head of Strategy. Visit www.webliquidgroup.com for more thought pieces.

About Alain Portmann

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

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The fact of the matter is that word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing communications – always has been and always will be. Historically marketers have had very limited means to effectively measure or influence word of mouth, and we’ve spent unimaginable amounts of time and money on the next best thing to get people to buy our products. In doing so we’ve talked about brand gap, conversion rates and engagement as measures of minute changes in marketing effectiveness while customers simply ask each other “is it going to do what I want and is it worth the price?”

One explanation for the lack of online word of mouth research and marketing adoption amongst marketers is the question of ownership. Within many companies there’s confusion about who online word of mouth belongs to – the brand management, digital marketing team, research team or customer relations. Again, highlighting the misalignment of many brands’ marketing and management structures to the changing behavior of customers.

In our experience measuring and marketing with online word of mouth (for Avis, OpenSkies, and others) we’ve seen precisely why this confusion of ownership occurs. Digital marketers often identify the opportunity because it’s online, but their budgets are generally limited to more tangible, ROI focused investments. Brand managers and research departments who could really get into the data tend to have more faith in the quality of insight from traditional sources such as focus groups, panels and offline tracking studies (a position that’s becoming very hard to defend). And customer service teams often fear that it’s just another complaint channel that they’d rather not open up – it can seem to be overwhelming.

The most successful model we’ve experienced is collaborative ownership – with Avis in particular we have great success as the digital agency managing word of mouth research and marketing on behalf of the marketing and customer relations teams. In fact, it was a priority of the program’s structure from day one – in order to add value to the social media space and leverage its’ insights and benefits to the greatest degree, it required a ‘task force’ of sorts made up of the heads of marketing and customer service, and a select member of their teams.

At the root of this approach is the thinking that word of mouth, and marketing in general, can be quite effective if it’s based on service instead of solicitation. An approach that would require, in many companies, some structural adjustments – but isn’t that that point – when customers change their behavior shouldn’t marketers?

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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.

About Matthew Cronin

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“Web Liquid’s proactive nature, knowledge of the premium travel space and business acumen will help us communicate our dream of delivering a memorable travel experience where every detail matters,” said Dale Moss, Managing Director, OpenSkies. “Web Liquid, like OpenSkies, believes small things add up to something big. They are a welcome asset to our team.”

The Web Liquid campaign will utilize innovative digital marketing techniques including social media and behaviour-centric digital media and creative. OpenSkies Web site www.flyopenskies.com is designed to share the excitement of building an airline from an insider’s perspective and seek community input in the process. It includes, for example, a time lapse video of the first OpenSkies’ plane being painted.

“We’re delighted to be a part of OpenSkies’ vision of creating a better transatlantic travel experience,” said Matt Cronin, Web Liquid co-founder, head of its New York office and OpenSkies account lead. “OpenSkies plans to roll out as a small airline with big ideas about changing the way people travel and we are focused on helping them communicate their vision.”

David Shiell, co-Founder and Managing Director of Web Liquid Group, says, “OpenSkies is the perfect client for Web Liquid as we share the ethos of challenging the status quo, working smart to deliver an exceptional experience via world-class digital marketing. Our relationship with OpenSkies reinforces Web Liquid’s model of blending consultancy with advertising execution; serving as a strategic partner to brands as opposed to an online shop that simply fulfils briefs and media schedules.”

About David Shiell

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The difference boils down to consumer confidence – advertising and marketing messages are inherently persuasive and rightly perceived as biased whereas WOM messages naturally build (or diminish) confidence without perceived bias. Studying the combined influences of persuasion and confidence upon an individual consumer as she considers a purchase is critical to understanding consumer behavior and marketing effectiveness. The tipping point where there is just the right combination of confidence and persuasive influences to justify the purchase, and when she ultimately decides to buy, is the nexus of persuasion and confidence.

Rarely are the persuasive and confidence influences equal at the nexus or time of purchase because brands/products/services with high degrees of consumer confidence don’t require a lot of persuasive messaging. Inversely, those brands/products/services with low degrees of consumer confidence must be very persuasive for one to justify the purchase.

From an economic perspective, maximizing persuasion is an expensive proposition. Many of the most effective marketing campaigns are so because of the scale of investment in terms of creative production values, media investment and also price discounting. Meanwhile it can be argued that maximizing confidence is significantly less costly as the confidence building channels, such as WOM, are often free and little if any price discounting is necessary.

It’s logical then that we’re seeing a renewed interest in WOM as marketers become more savvy and cost conscious, and as the internet continues to facilitate the distribution of WOM from peer to peer via online communities, forums, blogs and review sites. The key for marketers today is to leverage these online WOM channels effectively to build confidence in their brands, without abusing the opportunities they present or alienating consumers in the process.

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The award given by the National Customer Service Awards in conjunction with SOCAP (Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals) is the only award SOCAP gives outside of its professional body.

The accolade was the culmination of months of monitoring and benchmarking of Consumer Generated Insights (CGI) leading to the development and launch of the We Try Harder blog. The advanced program involved the integration of the Avis Marketing and Customer service departments and has resulted in significant increases in the approval rating for Avis (over 200% Net Approval Index) placing them well ahead of their competition.

Online conversations in forums, blogs and review websites are having an undeniable influence on consumer behaviour. Aware of the power of user generated content, Web Liquid and Avis instigated the CGI centric program to leverage these channels, taking a holistic approach to harness the power of online word-of-mouth. Ultimately this was achieved via the Avis blog and through continual monitoring of consumer sentiment, provided by the excellent services & technology of web monitoring company Market Sentinel.

David Shiell, Managing Director of Web Liquid commented, “We are incredibly proud of our involvement in this project as strategically it crosses the boundary of Digital Marketing into the channel of Customer Service and Brand Management.”

The award further demonstrates the continual growth of the online channel and its ability to take the communications lead within the marketing mix. Shiell added, “Such an award highlights the strength of this medium and the great lateral thinking coming out of Web Liquid and our partners, showing our ability to develop and lead successful through-the-line programs that permeate all levels of our clients business. This program (and the award) was very close to the heart of Avis and their ‘We try harder’ proposition. It was approved at Board level, adding additional exposure and pressure to the project and all involved. Obviously we didn’t disappoint! Our clients are ecstatic about the win!”

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But in recent years the standard purchase funnel has faced some opposition as marketers become more precise with their efforts to make people customers; drafting the skills of ethnographers and anthropologists to further define and illustrate how people behave as consumers.

Forrester recently published a report eschewing the traditional funnel for a model that’s based upon engagement. Scott Weisbrod has a nice recap here with the illustrations and Forrester’s suggested model for measuring engagement. Meanwhile David Armano proposes a marketing spiral that takes the idea of engagement into consideration. It seems everyone has their own take on the the old funnel these days, including us.

Our proposed evolution of the purchase funnel comes out of our study of CGC‘s influence on consumer behavior – leading up to the purchase as it is consumed as part of the consideration and research phases, and subsequently created after the purchase when the individual consumer shares her experience with the product.

This model places a greater emphasis on the purchase funnel as the experience of an individual intertwined with the funnels of many others. It’s a critically important point, because of the ease with which the experience is shared via online WOM — and the influence that this shared experience has on another others’ purchase behavior, having reached them at a critical time in their own purchase process. It’s not enough to study a single purchase funnel without considering how that purchase funnel intertwines, is influenced and influences the individual purchase funnels of other people.

So who’s right? What is the correct 2.0 version of the purchase funnel? Is the purchase funnel an antiquated model altogether? Or are we all right, in part? Consumers, their behaviors and the new marketplace are perhaps a bit too complex for any one model.

cgc, marketing, purchase funnel

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.

Site Conversion Optimization
Continuous improvement of conversion by focusing on dynamic landing pages, conversion optimization and site analytics.

Media Optimization
Ensuring your money follows the best performing sites, messages and prospects.

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This development parallels the Instant Messaging space, which saw the launch of Trillian, a proprietary multiprotocol instant messaging application for Windows created by Cerulean Studios.

Google is funding a project dubbed “Socialstream” which could be the world’s first unified social network, aggregating all existing social networks into a single interface. The reality is that Google’s social network offering has not taken off. Google’s lone current social network offering, Orkut, is not ranked in the top ten by Hitwise for U.S. social-networking sites. But Google is not alone in the race to deploy the first aggregated social network. Blue Swarm a startup in private beta, and Wink have some features to aggregate social networks. Also, Mozilla is developing a social-networking browser that compiles different social networks.

The advent of an open source social network would undoubtedly impact the entire social media segment, forcing social networks to begin addressing churn and reactivation of dormant users.  A unified social network would cash into the “chronically unfaithful” of social media. Nielsen figures confirm that network promiscuity is a factor, showing that 444,000 Britons visited all three of the leading rivals ” MySpace, Facebook and Bebo ” this year. The dangers of network promiscuity are illustrated by the fate of Friendster. The social network accrued more than 20 million users after its launch in 2003. In 2006 that figure had fallen to less than one million as users migrated to sites with better tools.

An aggregated social network would also allow for the application of collaborative filtering to social media. By aggregating from a larger set of information the method of predicting (filtering) the interests of a user by collecting taste information from many users (collaborating) would be facilitated. 

The trivialization of publishing brought on by social media is creating thousands of “publishing bubles” which when aggregated can become incredibly powerful. John Blossom from Shore provides further perspective.

“Social media is challenging search engines as a starting point for finding answers to questions in part because people come to trust the insights and expertise of specific communities to provide both their own insights and insights from their own research. Answer-oriented communities such as Yahoo! Answers,  WikiAnswers and LinkedIn Answers provide audiences the ability to vote on answers to specific questions – a competitive aspect to publishing that helps to both aggregate potential high-quality content and to rank its value.”

If social media brought about the trivialization of publishing, the aggregation of social media would reshape the industry by providing a badly needed tool for which the proliferation of social networks has created a need.

Socialstream, Orkut, webliquid

About Alain Portmann

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Armed with a complete understanding of the CGC environment marketers can leverage those insights to build consumer confidence through the strategic application of CGC marketing and customer service that is tightly and strategically integrated with existing marketing channels. It’s critical, however, that any community based marketing program has a customer benefit at its core.

This strategic and integrated approach goes beyond tactics to comprehensively assess various forms of CGC marketing, consider global applications including various market and language requirements, and project influence and ROI. Ultimately the goal is to foster positive and mitigate negative commentary through an honest adoption of the channel and to best represent the brand amongst those highly qualified consumers researching discoverable CGC online. In doing so, it is also possible to reduce cost and increase efficiency of advertising.

Our model demonstrates a consumer’s point of transaction as a balance between persuasion (advertising) and confidence (peer-to-peer/research/etc).
By building consumer confidence in the brand and aligning it with the strategic communications, your advertising won’t have to work as hard to persuade, build the brand reputation and drive sales.

And beyond increased consumer confidence in the brand, a strategic approach to CGC can also:
- Provide natural SEO, improving the positioning of results in organic web search (e.g. Google)
- Identify upstream and downstream sites contributing researchers, brand influencers, and buyers
- Reach your product/service researchers at point of key influence
- ­ Surround CGC content with complimentary and relevant advertising
- Initiate the development of a proprietary forum, blog and/or knowledge base,­ creating an innovative customer service forum for customer dialogue. Such an environment allows­ a brand to take a proactive approach to customers service, foster positive Word-of-Mouth and­ create an efficient distribution channel for information to the public and press

With all the benefits and opportunities provided by marketing in and around CGC many brands find the temptation too great and use the channel to persuade as if it were advertising. But as we’ve stated previously, CGC is not a marketing medium but rather a conversation amongst consumers about the products/services they want to buy, might buy or have bought. Indeed, corporate participation may be welcomed but only when the approach adheres to the ethics of the environment and provides a consumer benefit.

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The implications and advantages of CGC are significant in all aspects of marketing, from research through loyalty, and any approach should consider each of these in an ongoing and iterative process.

Here we’ll focus on the research aspects of :cgi including measuring and monitoring.

As the first step in harnessing the power of Word-of-Mouth online we recommend an initial audit to assess the volume of CGC related to our clients and their competitors, and an analysis of that data to establish benchmarks. The audit process, developed with our colleagues at Market Sentinel, consists of:

1) Reputation Imperatives Interview
Define the scope of content to be captured and analyzed such as keywords, brand metrics, communication priorities, hot topics, etc.

2) Data Capture
Technology spiders the web capturing relevant content and information about its source. The audit typically gathers content from the prior 6-month period for analysis.

3) Volume Measurement
Initial measurements of the amount of CGC are taken to establish a benchmark and to identify trends and influences upon commentary volume.

4) Influential Stakeholder Analysis
The data is analyzed to identify the most influential sources of CGC relating to our client, competitors and their industry.

5) Issue Influence Index
A measure of relative influence of content sources on the issue in focus.

6) Net Approval Index
Based upon the extensive research of Fred Reichheld in the development of the Net Promoter Score. We have adapted and applied this methodology to the universe of online conversation.

7) SWOT Analysis
Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the CGC data provides insights about product sentiment, market topics, customer segments, etc which are then plotted in a SWOT analysis, illustrating strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

With volume measured, influencers indexed and topics identified, these benchmarks provide the foundation for ongoing monitoring of the online consumer conversation in near real-time. Weekly, monthly or quarterly reports are created based upon the most recent CGC data measuring our clients’ brand health against Key Performance Indicators such as Net Approval Index. Acute attention is paid to the qualitative data content to identify actionable consumer insights as threats or opportunities. Competitive intelligence is maintained and compared in parallel with brand performance.

Together, the audit and ongoing monitoring can provide a marketer with deep insight about the health of their brand and set the stage for innovative marketing efforts – but we’ll save that for part 3…

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The world of corporate marketing and reputation management is currently experiencing a quantum leap in consumer orientation due to three primary factors:

1. Consumer-based Business Valuation
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is recognized as the most accurate consumer metric for projecting business growth. Creator, Fred Reichheld of Bain & Co., measured the number of consumer “Promoters” (those who would recommend a product or services) and “Detractors” (those who actively discourage the use of a product or service) of hundreds of companies across many categories finding that on average the NPS leader grows at 2.5x its competition

2. Persuasiveness of Word-of-Mouth (WOM)
Marketers have long believed that person-to-person conversations are among the most persuasive, research now confirms this:

• 90% of people cite Word of Mouth (WOM) as one of the best sources of ideas and information -eMarketer Word of Mouth Report 2005
• Consumers are 50%+ more likely to be influenced by WOM than traditional ads. – Intelliseek September 2005
• “Whether the connection is long or short, the person-to-person information exchanged online carries a weight that traditional corporate messaging simply can’t match.” – eMarketer Word of Mouth Report 2005

3. Pervasiveness of Consumer Generated Content (CGC)
The growth of online conversation about products and services is stratospheric; participation in Usenet groups, forums, social networks, review sites, blogs, photo sharing, video sharing, etc. continues to grow rapidly and the use of tagging and search engines makes the information readily discoverable by consumers.

Today, CGC is WOM online, and its effect on the consumer purchase funnel is significant. Consumers discover influential discourse from peers at the most critical moments leading up to a purchase. And after the purchase, the consumer often becomes yet another creator of this content, adding their voice to the conversation and their consumer experience to the public domain.

Consumer adoption of the Internet as a channel of commerce and communication is evolving marketing and reputation management as we speak.

“Studies show that positive WOM is likely to increase consumers’ purchase intentions, help create a favourable image toward the brand, and subsequently decrease a firm’s overall promotional expenditures. Conversely, negative WOM is likely to dissuade potential buyers from considering a particular product or brand, thus damaging the company’s reputation and financial position” – Advances in Consumer Research Volume 25, 1998

“Satisfied customers become, in effect, part of the company’s marketing department, not only increasing their own purchases but also providing enthusiastic referrals, customer loyalty provides companies with a powerful financial advantage” a battalion of credible sales and marketing and PR troops who require no salary or commissions.” – Fred Reichheld The Ultimate Question

The question is not if Consumer Generated Content is vital to a brand, but how it is best utilized.

web liquid, word of mouth, consumer generated content, consumer generated insight

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First it’s important to make clear that CGC is not a marketing medium, it’s a conversation amongst consumers about the products/services they want to buy, might buy or have bought. The fact that the conversation is about products and services presents the marketing opportunity but doesn’t grant anyone the right to crash the party with their sales pitch. Indeed, participation is welcome but only when the approach adheres to the ethics of the environment.

Among the many points of difference between the broadcast and online models of marketing is the notion of service over solicitation. It’s a core value that consumers have brought to the space and one which smart marketers have been quick to understand – in the world of CGC it’s an imperative for a corporate effort to succeed. But the real opportunity for corporate participation in CGC is not simply to look at the space as a tactical channel to *not* solicit, rather as the cornerstone of an entire marketing strategy.

First, CGC presents a valuable research opportunity – as we previously discussed, CGC is Word-of-Mouth but online it’s also a public record of those conversations and consumer sentiment relative to your brand and that of your competitors. A number of companies have popped up offering technology to capture those conversations for analysis but much of the application of that technology is still quite tactical – measuring the WOM around a particular event or campaign. In fact, the CGC research opportunity is to use that insight on a regular basis and with quality marketing-based analysis to derive valuable insights and identify concerns and opportunities.

Armed with this valuable research data and the insight of experienced marketing analysis, CGC presents the opportunity to engage customers and potential customers at the most critical time in the purchase process – right when they’re looking for the information about a product or service. A significant difference between CGC and WOM is that CGC is on demand – I find what people have written about the new BlackBerry right at the time I’m researching and considering the purchase, rather than via a guerrilla/buzz tactic or whenever someone I know decides to tell me. The timing of this impression is critical to the influence of CGC.

For a brand to engage in this conversation with a strategic approach including a deep understanding of what’s being discussed online and its influence, there is a great opportunity to more effectively reach qualified consumers and position the brand as an authority on the topic. Employing a few simple CGC tactics may provide short term gains but it’s a short-sighted approach to one of the most important drivers of marketing’s evolution.

consumer generated content, web 2.0, social media, blogs,consumer generated insight, blog advertising, blogging,web liquid

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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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Ultimately it comes down to the distinction between ‘media’ as a channel of communication and ‘content’ being the communication itself. And ‘users’ being general participants whereas ‘consumers’ are a subset representing those who have purchased or are considering the purchase of a product or service . Here’s how we define each:

UGM – User Generated Media: A channel or platform of communication that facilitates the creation of content by the users. Examples: YouTube, Flickr, MySpace

CGM – Consumer Generated Media: A channel or platform of communication specifically related to the purchase or purchase consideration of a product or service. Example: www.consumerist.com

UGC – User Generated Content: A specific piece of communication in the form of text, audio, video, illustration, or animation created by a general user. Example: a sneezing panda on YouTube

CGC – Consumer Generated Content: A specific piece of communication in the form of text, audio, video, illustration or animation about a product or service. Example: cancelling AOL

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Fred Reichheld, author of The Ultimate Question blogged about this email exchange between he and his son. The importance of which is best stated by Fred:

Moral of this story: It is not advertising campaigns, marketing promotions, or retention programs that determine corporate reputations and profitable growth; it is the millions of conversations and email exchanges that occur between family members, friends and colleagues every month of the year.

Fred came short of pointing out that this conversation, whilst incredibly influential amongst the Reichheld’s personal networks, it is now influencing an exponentially larger group of people including you and I simply because he decided to blog about it. This is WOM online, this is CGC and after reading Fred’s post one cannot deny its commercial importance to Chase, Commerce Bank and USAA.

I for one, had ever heard of USAA banking but now I’m not only aware and have visited their website with curiosity but I actually think somewhat favourably of them. That’s a valuable impression. Further, my mild disinterest in Chase is galvanized and I’m actually considering switching from Citibank to Commerce Bank because this story supports what I already know about the bank. Btw, I don’t particularly like their TV ads but I suspect they are effective.

Beyond widening the circle of influence this example also demonstrates the opportunity each of the brands mentioned now has to better understand their customers and perhaps even engage with them in this channel. This is what makes online WOM and CGC a valuable marketing channel. The Reichheld’s exchange is but one of thousands of conversations online about each of those banks. In aggregate and when analysed properly, these conversations yield tremendously insightful customer and competitive information unmatched by surveys and focus groups. Further, each is an invitation for the brand to connect with customers on a more personal level demonstrating their interest in the individual and their commitment to customer experiences.

This is an opportunity to close the brand gap on both sides of the equation, an opportunity to be a more effective marketer and for now, a great competitive advantage for those marketers who act and act wisely.

Chalk up one more contribution to our ever-evolving communication behaviour, and understanding thereof, courtesy of the Internet.

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