thefunnel

Normally I try generate unique content, and not reiterate what others are doing, but today I participated in a MarketingProfs seminar regarding the “State of Social Media”, and this is well worth a brief comment. This research is an in depth view and benchmark into more 3000 companies (both B-2-B and B-2-C), and how they use social media, how they measure it and what their success so far has been. There’s a few surprising findings / recommendations.

1) There’s hardly any difference at all between the usage in B-2-B and B-2-C. Same tools are used trying to achieve the same things. You would think B-2-C would be much further ahead, but no. They are exactly in the same place with approximately success rate for what they’re trying to do. Except of course that their participating audiences are larger.

2) The objectives around Social Media are pretty fundamental – driving traffic to the web site, generate awareness and look for negative PR comments. Again you would think B-2-C would have more creative goals.

3) Although Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are the big ones, there’s a large number of smaller “industry specific” applications, so practitioners really need to know what their customers are using on a micro level. Twitter might not be it, although everyone is talking about it . You need to find out what the “work persona” is using.

4) Of the people that are using Social Media, only an average of 35% say that the efforts are successful meeting expectations. Pretty bad, compared to more traditional e-marketing activities like email marketing, or maybe the expectations are too low for email.

5) The average number of Twitter followers for companies are greatly skewed due to a few high hitters. The norm is about 150. So if your company have 150 followers you’re doing OK.

6) Only 12% of companies have strict and clearly articulated Social Media policies, and > 60% of marketers practicing Social Media do it “on their own time” (not being paid for it or part of their objectives)

A few nuggets (with my own twist) from an article (Arruda) about personal branding in the Social Media era, that I thought were valuable, but also apply well to company branding and the basics of marketing.
- Don’t be a fake. Strong brands are about authenticity (value proposition)
- Wishy-washy. Don’t try to be everything to all people (segmentation and targeting)
- Think before you act. Have a plan before you engage with social media (planning is everything, plans are nothing)
- Talk, and more talk. If you have nothing better to do than just re-tweeting everything, just stop
- Quality is better than quantity. Better to have a few right followers / participants / visitors than lots of the wrong ones
- Don’t switch tools all the time. It’s not about the tool. It’s all about the content (the latest hype)
- Don’t forget traditional marketing vehicles (you customers might spend most of their time off line)
- There’s a temptation to do everything cheaply with low quality to save some money, after all the Social Web is all about CGC, but what perception will this portray on your products and company. Don’t confuse amateurs with professionals
- Talk about what you can do for your customers rather than what you do (we, we, versus them)
- Don’t measure anything. Everything can be measured (outcome based marketing)

Depending on the company PR can mean Public Relations or Press Relations, but in the context of this article it’s defined as trade press relations. Trade press relations have always been a “soft” marketing science, because the return of a PR investment is often not immediately fully visible, and PR like advertising often works in the background changing customer’s perceptions, rather than directly driving leads into the funnel. Having said this, there are many things that can be measured, and also digital marketing has added a new dimension to the measurement PR.

There are three parties in PR, the company, the subject matter influencers (editors) and the readers. The simplest measurement of PR is through the amount of coverage received in targeted media. A one level deeper metric is to also assess the type of coverage on some kind of “positiveness” scale based on being on message, or based on the type of coverage, such as case studies, customer testimonials, product news or awards.  Another metric is counting the amount of coverage, but then comparing this against the coverage for the competition. By doing this one arrives at something called PR mind share. Mind share is simply the amount of coverage received as % of total coverage (total being your + competitors) in your targeted publications for the products you compete. This metric can for obvious reasons be a hard sell if you’re a small one product line company, comparing yourself against a multi product line large company, due to brand halo effects. For PR in print publications the amount of PR coverage is sometimes compared to the equivalent cost of advertising for the same space, multiplied with some factor based on the notion that PR is more credible that advertising, but industry experts seem not have found an agreement if this is a good measurement or not.

Digital marketing and web 2.0 in particular have brought some new positive measurement practices for PR, and some new opportunities, but also some challenges. On the “what value does PR provide”, PR SEO with its potential to increase web site inbound link equity is a something that PR professionals should become familiar with. In addition, how much PR is driving web site traffic in general, can be easily measured, and if web site engagement activities are valued and also traced to its source, this can provide another way of estimating ROI for PR. The largest change for PR is probably the fact that the third part of the PR puzzle – the reader, who used to be a passive recipient (or probably not entirely passive but there was no way knowing what the reader thought,  has now also become a contributor through social networks, blogs, review and comment boards. This has completely changed the landscape of PR, and PR professionals now need to carefully monitor what is being said about them in numerous places, participate and respond as required. Companies are forced to move into the area of reputation management, whether they like it or not, depending on the type of discussions taking place.