July 2009 - Lumenatti

Last week we talked about cultural readiness for social marketing. In this follow-up post, we will look at how various experts recommend getting a YES! from legal and compliance for a social marketing strategy or campaign.

Step Strategy. Few organizations that are leery of the uncertainty and lack of control inherent in social media are going to bungee jump into the water. They want to dangle their toes in the water from the safety of the pier and gradually dive in head first. The common wisdom is to start with a listening campaign, then join the conversation, and then launch a branded program. This is a fine starting point but does not go far enough. You need to fully develop your step strategy and align each step with a value proposition that matters to the person you’re selling to. For example, saying, “First we’re going to listen” is not as powerful as “ We’ve been informally following three key communities where XYZ customer segment congregates and talks. We discovered three key trends that suggest we could increase our sales by adding new colors to our line, giving our call center reps more autonomy and offering free shipping on returns. The increase in sales will far exceed the cost of doing this. We think we can gain further ROI by formalizing our listening campaign and extending it through a private customer feedback community.”

Start Internally. Many companies view social media as “cheap” and want to adopt it to augment shrinking marketing dollars. In reality, organizations can dramatically impact costs by adopting social tools internally. Not only is there great ROI, but the internal experience helps to overcome some of the hurdles for using the tools externally. Cisco is one company that reports huge gains by using an internal community structure to drive productivity and innovation. Another example is Best Buy, whose employee community Blue Shirt Nation (link) is credited with reducing employee turn-over significantly and improving customer sat scores. Once people are comfortable with social tools, extending their use to outside stakeholders is an easier sell.

Game Changer. What separates the social experimenters from the game changers? First, these companies are beyond the “do we do it?” phase and into the “what are best practices and how do we get started phase?” In addition, they understand that socializing both business operations and marketing can give them an order of magnitude advantage over those who are simply dabbling in Facebook pages. Often, the early adopters of emerging technologies or business models can disrupt and displace long term industry stalwarts. This scares the pants off of senior management. Show them examples of new upstarts that are gaining share or changing the rules of engagement for your industry and make the case for beating them at their own game. This is a true strategic business discussion that needs to be well researched. You need to illustrate how this can dramatically change the game for your company and reap long term competitive advantage and business value.

Solve a challenge. Socializing operations can solve key business challenges. Take cost of customer support, for example. The use of customer advocates as part of the support function is a tried and true strategy in the technology and telecommunications industries. IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, and others have reduced their cost per support episode significantly, sometimes by as much as 65%. This would be impossible without an integrated strategy that uses both branded and organic online communities to facilitate the interchange between knowledgeable customers who are motivated to help each other. Some smart organizations are starting to form these support communities and use the feedback and user generated content to improve products and customer experience. In some instances, they use the outputs to better educate their own workforce about how and why people use their products.

Provide tools for selling up and out. The person you’re pitching will have to continue to sell to h/her peers or manager. Make it easy for them. Offer to be part of the meeting or give your boss a “no brainer” presentation that clearly lays out the opportunity, risks, rewards, costs and timeline for ROI. Make sure you include competitive analysis that demonstrates how and why this stuff works. Remember you will need multiple reasons that will resonate with multiple stakeholders and decision makers. Legal wants to know about how you will manage risks and who else in your industry has tried something like this. They want detailed case studies. Finance will want to know return ratios and how the ROI of social marketing compares to the performance of other MarCom channels. Brand managers will want to know how this will forward their brand messaging and how they can protect their brand image. The answers, of course, depend upon your objectives and approach. But if you don’t have the answers to these types of challenges, you shouldn’t be asking for a Yes!

Getting a YES! requires knowledge of what works and why for a specific application of social tools that can achieve your organization’s objectives. Being conversant in metrics that matter helps a great deal. In fact, every topic above includes some reference to metrics or ROI. The basics that apply to selling in any new program or strategy apply to social marketing or social business operations. Do your homework, make your case, pre-sell and build alliances and hope for great timing.

At the end of last year, we were invited by the CMO of a very huge retailer to tout our wares. Our dog-and-pony very quickly turned into a conversation with a lot of probing and debate. At one point the CMO held up my business card and said, “I get about 50,000 of these a year. I throw them in a drawer. What should make me dig through that stack to find yours and give you a call?”

After a few seconds of thought, I replied, “When you want to take your customer relationships from transaction to engagement.” This hit a chord and we left high on the promise that he wouldn’t even throw the card in the drawer.

I’ve since thought a lot about that answer. Marketers throw the word engagement around like Frisbees at the dog beach. It’s a word with lofty goals, implying a rich relationship that deepens and grows over time. By its very nature, engagement suggests a commitment. From the marketer’s perspective, commitment is good; it strengthens customer loyalty, stimulates ongoing conversation and feedback, and results in higher lifetime value. From the customer point of view, commitment deepens the brand promise. The customer develops affinity for the brand because they have a role in how it evolves and grows.

Many brands don’t understand how to truly engage with its stakeholders. They take a one size fits all approach to engaging customers. Few recognize that commitment is not easy. Hiring a team of mommy bloggers is not engagement. Building a branded community isn’t necessarily it, either. Nor is surveying customers, launching a Facebook page or producing a viral video campaign.  These things are simply tactics; they do not unto themselves matter unless they are done cohesively.

Engagement results when you find the nexus of stakeholder needs and interests and your brand’s legitimate role in fulfilling those needs. It requires the recognition that people fulfill their needs in a variety of ways and that your brand is just a part of how they approach a specific part of their life. A brilliant engagement strategy helps individuals aggregate how they approach a special interest or need. The brand thus shows its commitment by truly engaging in ways that are important to its stakeholders.

Next time I get the question about “why should I call you?” I’ll answer a little differently. This time I’d say,” When you want to help your customers pursue, organize and enhance a lifestyle that includes your brand.” We’re way past engagement now; we’re moving towards consanguinity. Ant that’s a tough tie to break.