A Pleasant 2009 to a Promising 2010? or is it???

31st night for most is a night of partying like crazy into the wee hours of the morning gyrating to bollywood numbers being belted out by the live bands. For me, on the other hand it was rather subdued with very few friends around and dad away at work until very late. So far, 2010 wasn’t looking too good!

Well, to be fair, December ‘09 had been great for me. After finishing up with a really tough 3rd semester at school, it was time to relax and just enjoy myself. The trip to India began well with an amazing visit to Hyderabad. Several other trips followed to Mumbai, Nasik and finally to Ankleshwar where the newest addition to the family,  dad’s new SX4 awaited It was love at first sight!! The shiny black car with curves that could have done any supermodel proud stood in the driveway begging to be taken out for a drive. I couldn’t help but oblige…. Four days and endless gourmet meals (cooked by one of the best chefs that I know, my mom!) later, it was time to head back to Bangkok for my final semester. As miserable as I felt having to leave, I remembered something my dad always says “bad times never last forever!” Also, I would be getting to meet friends back at school, so there was atleast something to look forward to.

One thing that I can be happy about is my promise to myself to click more pictures and learn as much as possible about digital photography. I guess you can call it my new year resolution! While I have already started honouring that promise, I hope I can keep it up and not let the workload get in the way. In an attempt to do this, I went along on the student union trip to Safari World which is a theme park in Thailand. The trip started off well with some animal shows and a great lakeside lunch. Later at an air gun shooting range, I managed to get my little finger of my hand smashed in the gun somehow while trying to reload it. After returning to AIT, I visited the local hospital for a tetanus shot. Only problem is, I ended up getting 8 stitches on my finger and had to get the nail removed. While the procedure itself wasn’t extremely painful because of the generous dose of anaesthesia, 5 injections to be precise, the pain was excruciating later that night when it’s effect wore off. For now, its a dressing a day and stitches to be removed after a week.

A bit difficult to remain optimistic about this year when it starts off on such a note but I am sure there’s lots more to come and it can’t be all bad, can it??

Life or something like it!

Its been a while since my last post for which I apologise. Like a million others who ever started a blog (for whatever reasons they may be), after having promised themselves that they would keep writing regularly, I succumbed to the pressures of a gruelling semester loaded with group work and painful presentations.

This semester started with lots of goals and plans for most of us. While implementing them, they were on top of the priority list for me. Somehow, during the course of this semester, the priorities changed. Unfortunately, it just became more about survival than anything else! At one point of time I realized after several complaints from my friends that I was becoming more nagging by the day and was losing focus. One outcome of this, and I cant complain about which, was that I earned myself the name “Cribbitty Avi”. Energy drinks and coffee might keep you awake but can hardly offer you the energy to work endlessly. Finding the motivations to keep working seems to be getting more difficult than ever!

With an assignment due by midnight tonight and more deadlines ahead, it is more important than ever to be put my head down and get work done. But somehow, I just had to stop to write this and get it out of my system. I guess I am just tired of using my friends as punching bags and needed to vent it some place else. Well, so thats what this was about. So much for ranting about life and its misgivings. Back to work for now, I guess…..

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has many benefits over the traditional marketing methods which are discussed below. Having said that, to achieve the optimum results, I believe, marketers need to have the right mix of traditional (print, tvc’s etc) marketing along with social media marketing so that it augments the overall marketing strategy and doesn’t attempt to function in a standalone manner.

1> Create awareness and generate exposure for businesses

For brands today, it’s all about creating awareness. Consumers are going to talk about brands whether or the companies like it and this has an impact on their views of the brand and their purchase decisions.[1] The internet can be utilized as an excellent medium to listen in on the conversations ensuing amongst consumers regarding one’s brand and to work on a strategy to create positive influence on them. Considering the spread of the internet today, consumers world-over can be reached very cost effectively. Creating community sites, fan pages etc give the consumer opportunities to explore and interact with the brands through games, blogs and events.

2> Consumers are much more likely to trust WOM over traditional advertising

Consumers get influenced to make purchases in a variety of different ways. According to a global Nielsen survey of 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets, ‘consumer recommendations’ were the most credible form of advertising as claimed by 78% of the study’s respondents.[2] Specifically, in the case of the Thailand market, 81% of the respondents said that ‘Word of Mouth’ was their most trusted media source followed by TV advertising which was at 66%. Branded websites and email were at 55% and 50% respectively.[3] This is shown in the graph below.

“Online Word-of-Mouth is a powerful medium that gives ‘power to isolated consumers’ and allows for a ‘boundless dialogue’ with a unlimited number of other consumers” (Bernd Stauss, Global Word of Mouth, 1997)

Various social media marketing tools like blogs etc allow consumers to rank, rate and comment about different brands and their products. This allows them to ‘brand’ their name first locally and get ‘repeat’ customers. As long as they are able to maintain high
quality of their offerings, these customers then become ‘satisfied’ customers and in the next stage, start recommending this product to their community.[4]

3> Ability of Social Media Marketing to capture a very targeted market

Unlike traditional marketing methods, SMM may be employed to reach out to a specific age group or regional customer base and establish a two-way communication.  They can then build a database and utilize it to inform, reward, thank, re-sell, cross-sell, and up-sell therefore increasing the value of each customer.[5] Several market research documentations are available suggesting which sites or communities are frequented more by certain demographics and this is often used as a cue by marketers to employ different strategies depending on their targeted consumer profiles.

4> Rise in search engine rankings

SMM encourages more conversations to take place about brands/products/services etc. Different media like blogs, discussion forums, different online applications like games etc are used to direct traffic towards the brand or company’s own site. Because there are more occasions when the brand or company name are mentioned, they show up more often in related searches on the internet. Google, which is one of the most widely used search engine in the world, ranks pages with higher number of clicks higher than others. Directing more traffic towards one’s page more often would result in increased number of clicks and therefore a higher ranking on Google.

5> It’s just plain cheaper!!!

Most traditional advertising media like tv, print, online advertising etc require substantial spending because they try to obtain prime advertising real estate. Social media marketing however is comparatively a lot cheaper. Most channels that are utilized for SMM are free. The cost generally involved here is in the time and effort required to monitor these sites and manage them effectively.

6> Disruption is Dead[6]

Venture on to the streets and there is advertising everywhere. Watch television, and you’ll be exposed to thousands of unwanted advertising messages. Due to the clutter caused by so many messages, the consumer often just ignores them. Consuming media has historically been a passive activity where viewers and readers had little choice but to be exposed to ads. Social media marketing on the other hand engages the customer in several activities that interest him/her and conveys an experience which is many times more effective than conventional advertising. It creates more consumer engagement which is crucial for success. Only those people with interest of their own would visit the sites and this would quite clearly result in better conversions.

---

References

[1] ‘Can Brands Have a Social Life?’ – Rohit Bhargava, Ogilvy One

[2] Nielsen, “Word-of-Mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool”, October 2007

[3] ACNielsen Global Consumer (Oct-Nov’07), Base : RD who have made purchase online in the past 3 months

[4] http://localadlink5star.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/

[5] http://teamdigital.com/blog/2009/new-rules-of-advertising-in-the-digital-age/

[6] http://teamdigital.com/blog/2009/new-rules-of-advertising-in-the-digital-age/

Facebook as a Marketing Tool

Yesterday, I happened to attend a talk by Bronwen Evans, Associate General Manager of the Baldwin Boyle Group on ‘Facebook – Friend or Foe’. Not only was it a great presentation, it proved to be a great place to meet some very interesting people. Here are few of things discussed in the presentation.

Facebook is one of the fastest growing and most widely used social networking site around with over 230 million users worldwide. It provides the opportunity for endless networking and meeting people that you otherwise may not have. Brands have been utilizing the various ‘marketing’ features of Facebook quite successfully in the past and even more brands are getting in on the act.

Most brands use the Fan pages to create a profile for themselves and try to get a group of dedicated followers. Fan pages can be set up only by the people authorized by the brands/companies themselves. Individuals however, are free to get together with others and form group pages. What this does is provides brands with a some people who would be actively listening and more importantly, contributing ideas and feedback to the company. If leveraged effectively, this can be extremely valuable to them. Starbucks I think is the most cited example in this regard. They have managed to champion this technique and have reaped significant benefits.

News feeds is another useful Facebook feature. No two news feeds are the same and the best thing about these are that they can be customized to show news feeds about only certain areas of interest or from certain Facebook friends. This can be used as a great medium to inform people about new activities or events and have the possibility of being ’shared’ by users for others to view as well.

There are certain precautions or words of advice however before indulging in Facebook.

1. Don’t use it to hardsell. Social media marketing is about creating conversations and developing a reputation for your brand. Most people don’t like to be sold things online. Engage them, give them something to talk about. The rest will follow.

2. Elvis Presley in one of his songs says “Wise men say, only fools rush in….”. This applies in this context too. Know your audience!

3. Be prepared to invest some amount of time and effort.

4. Be as transparent as possible. People hate pretenders.

Facebook can be really useful for large companies, SMEs as well as indviduals in terms of generating awareness and reach. It’s an excellent marketing medium and the sooner comapnies start using it, the sooner they will reap the benefits.

How ‘BIG’ is Microblogging??

I have come to understand that blogging has evolved from habit of writing diaries. The only difference is people started doing it online, therefore being christened a ‘Blog’ (a contraction of the term “Web Log”). People wrote lengthy, detailed accounts of events, activities and what not. However, as time went by, they started writing more condensed, portable and personal versions of their blogs. These were in 140 characters or less and were called “microblogs”.

Microblogging is as easy as sending a group text message to a select bunch of friends. It has now become a very popular mode of communications primarily due to the ease by which people can share and seek information on a daily basis. The fact that it is only 140 characters or less often makes it more palatable and allows people to communicate in a concise manner. It’s context however, is often very different from that used in emails.

One of the first companies to provide a microblogging platform was Twitter. It has now become a platform extensively used by individuals, brands and companies in a variety of different ways. Since then, there have been numerous other services which provide a microblogging platform.

The reason for which microblogging gained such popularity is the fact that while it is fairly simple to maintain a blog, it is easier to write short (often 2 sentences) updates. They are often easier to comprehend than regular blogs. However, on the hand, its brevity can mean that readers may misinterpret posts if they don’t understand the context of the post.

Many corporates are using Twitter for their social media marketing purposes quite successfully. Companies like Southwest Airlines use tweets (posts on twitter) as one of its standard customer service tools. Other examples include NASA which used twitter to provide updates of their latest space shuttle missions etc.

Microblogging has widespread appeal and has proved to play a vital role during crisis situations like tragedies and disasters. Twitter proved to do a better job in getting the information out quicker than traditional news media for example in the US Airways Flight 1549 crash in the Hudson river.

Microblogging is an interesting and fun way to keep in touch with friends and people who interest you. It’s free (atleast for now) and is definitely here to stay. Get into it, enjoy it… this is what ‘The Social Media Bible’ suggests.

References: ‘The Social Media Bible’ – by Lon Safko and David Brake

Is Twitter for you?

There are tons of sites on the internet and an even larger number of people who seem to be going ga-ga over twitter. I have only recently started using twitter and so had to really convince myself (and a few others) about what the true potential of using twitter could be.

Twitter provides a platform for users to send out status updates in upto 140 characters. This is termed as microblogging. So how exactly is a status update supposed to work for you? Well, these status updates are initially used by users to put up the latest events in their lives or just to tell people what they are upto. Eventually, it becomes a place where they start putting up links to articles/sites/issues that interest them. This opens the door to several possibilities. Companies can follow twitter profiles of potential employees to find out their interests and affiliations and vice-versa or use them for connecting with the customers. Followers are people who choose to “subscribe” to your status updates and unlike in facebook, don’t require your permission to do so.

Many brands/companies have their own twitter profiles. They often use these profiles to inform people about various offers and discounts, respond to customer inquiries, monitor customer opinions etc. Having said that, twitter isn’t a medium that marketers can choose to make use of overnight. In order to do this, they would need to find out carefully which conversation to get involved in, and more importantly stay involved in. As my one of my friend says, it may be something that companies need to spend a substantial amount of time and effort in achieving. I agree, but I would look at it as an investment, and a good one at that.

Having millions of followers may not be the best result or the yardstick being used to measure your success as a marketer using twitter. You need to have a group of followers who are interested in what you are saying for it to be beneficial to you. Or else, your message may just be getting diluted. Interested followers are most likely to engage in more meaningful conversations and result in better feedback for you. Your message would then get re-tweeted and spread by your followers on to theirs and so on, therefore reaching a really wide audience. In a way, your customers are your medium to advertise. And the best part of this… it’s word of mouth, the most trusted medium for most people.

A common misconception is that twitter is only for geeks and techies. Twitter’s easy to use homepage makes it really easy to navigate for anyone who wants to try. The only thing that needs getting used to is how to really use the status messages to put up something useful to the people who are reading them. I think this comes with time and practice.

During a conversation at lunch with a colleague, she said she is sometimes reluctant to use twitter to update some messages as she doesn’t want everyone to receive them. Most messages are ok, but some she would want only a certain group of people to be sent to. Twitter doesn’t let you decide who receives the message and who doesn’t, rather sending it out like a broadcast to all those following you. I couldn’t think of a possible solution to this. Do people create multiple profiles for themselves to send out specific messages to select followers or is there another solution to this?

Social Media Marketing – Measurement and Tracking

Traditionally, the goal of all marketing communications and advertising has been to increase the bottom line. It basically says, if it doesn’t increase sales, it just isn’t worth doing. This is one of the reasons some people are skeptical about social media marketing.

There always seems to be a strong need to justify any strategic decision with results and numbers. When a brand is using social media marketing (SMM) as a part of its marketing strategy, it has to look beyond just the numbers. Wolfgang Jaegel in his presentation says, “you can’t approach new media with old thinking”.  In case the SMM, the results aren’t always quantifiable. Having said that, it is always good to know how effective the campaign has been for you and what could be done to tweak it. For this, some amount of measurement is necessary.

There are a lot of conversations going on in the cyberspace about a brand, a company, a product. These take place either on social networking sites, blogs, chatrooms, various forums, basically any site or application that allows a dialogue. The brand would be driving traffic to it’s own website and some of the simple metrics that can be used to monitor this are -

1. Unique visitors
2. Page views per visitor
3. Time spent on site
4. Total time spent per user
5. Frequency of visits

These alone however, do not give a very clear picture about the true effectiveness of a SMM campaign. Just an increase in traffic may not be something that you were looking to achieve and may not necessarily be a positive thing for your brand. Some additional metrics that can and should be used (as Michael Brito writes in his blog) are given below.

1. Content Consumption – To find out where the visitors to the brand’s site are coming from, what content they are reading.
2. Content Distribution – A measure of the number of visitors who are actually interacting with the content.
3. Social Bookmarking – A measure of how many people are adding the brand’s site to social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit etc. Can be measured by tracking the number of users clicking on the social bookmarking icons.
4. Subscribing to a RSS feed – A measure of how many of the readers subscribe to the brand’s RSS feeds.
5. Emailing posts – To measure how many emails are being sent through the site’s form. Websites like wordpress offer this functionality.
6. Who is talking about you – Gives a rough idea of which other sites are linking to the brand’s and therefore gives an insight into where else the brand is being discussed.
7. Profile Engagement – If the brand has a social network profile, the number of friends on the brand’s site, total profile visits etc.

These metrics can be generated very easily using analytic tools that are freely available on the internet or by using Google analytics. Together, I believe these would give a good idea of the effectiveness of the SMM campaign.

The Difference Between Viral Marketing, Online Banner Ads and Social Media Marketing

Last night a friend of mine asked me what was the difference between social media marketing, viral marketing and online banner ads. Well, here’s my response…. and correct me if I am wrong.

Viral marketing is a marketing technique that relies on using social networks to create awareness about brands. This could be achieved through video and audio clips, games and text messages. The objective of marketers using this technique is to appeal to a particular segment of the audience and hope that it gets passed along by them to as many people as possible creating a buzz and in the process, brand awareness. This technique is pretty much a monologue and is best used as short term campaigns. Here’s a great example of a viral marketing campaign by Burger King.

Online banner ads can be thought of as simple advertising using digital real estate like webpages, chat windows etc. Again, pretty much one way communication.

Social media marketing on the other hand is a long term process that requires brands to listen to their existing and potential customers very closely before jumping on to the bandwagon. Not all conversations are worth jumping into. Brands need to decide which ones would pay off and which are better to stay away from. The objective is to engage the consumers and get a dialogue going between them and the brand.

Hope that helped…

Strategic Online Marketing

This morning I attended a presentation at the JW Marriott in Bangkok on Strategic Online Marketing During the Economic Crisis by Wolfgang Jaegel (twitter: @wjaegel). Wolfgang is the Founder and Regional Managing Director of ADMAX plus Co., Ltd. These are few of the things that he spoke about in the presentation.

What was interesting to me was the way that Wolfgang defines social media marketing. According to him, social media marketing has been around ever since there has been a market place. People talk about your product/services all the time. The only difference now with the internet gaining popularity, is that all or most of this “conversation” has shifted online and there are tons of tools available to facilitate this process. The number of people who can participate in these conversations has just grown (not sure how many times!!).

The fundamentals of social media marketing are still the same as that of traditional marketing. You attract customers using marketing campaigns, convert them into customers and then try to retain them. It’s a lot easier to retain existing customers than going out and attracting new ones. Consumers are now in control. Marketers often have difficulty in accepting this, but they have to start!

Companies need to decide whether to use online marketing in a ‘Tactical’ or ‘Strategic’ manner. Tactical would mean they use it for a limited time whereas strategic would mean a long term commitment. In either case, they need to set up some form of analytics to be able to measure the results of these campaigns. It’s not enough to just have these campaigns if you aren’t really going to tweak it to get the best possible results for you. There is never a “one size fits all” strategy. Each brand needs to customize their campaigns and this may be a trial and error process.

There were quite a few interesting case studies as well which I plan to share in my later posts. Until then… cheers!

The Economic Downturn and Social Media Marketing

Beginning in late 2007, companies around the world faced a huge recession and this affected their spending and budgeting decisions in a major manner. Most companies are still trying to cut back on expenses and keep funding only their most profitable and/or their top priority projects. Different companies often have conflicting views regarding whether marketing (more specifically advertising) expenditure should be one of the line items to get a ‘haircut’.

A report (Social Media Playtime is Over – Jeremiah K. Owyang, March 2009) from Forrester says that 53% of interactive marketers expect their budgets for SMM to increase as a response to the recession. The rationale provided is that companies can look at it as an opportunity to boost their sales in times of crisis. By increasing their budgets, they can take advantage of the situation where the competitors are panicking and raiding their marketing and R&D budgets. This could perhaps allow them to oust the competitors from the market totally. The potential gain from the increased market share could very well outweigh the increase in marketing support required for a hike in social media spending.

Do you think this approach of “offense is the best defense” is the best way to go or should companies play it safe and wait till they have weathered the storm to raise their spending on marketing (including social media)?