BarnRaisers

The image above is of one hand clapping. Perhaps it’s coming from the marketing plan that relies on only one type of media.

It makes sense social and traditional media would work better together but, as with any new form of marketing, social media has more to prove so the two are sometimes compared as if they were in competition.

Here are 12 case studies that prove social and traditional media were meant to work together.

1. CLEVELAND CLINIC: Was not the first in healthcare to experiment in social media, but it achieved success where others failed. By structuring a cross-functional team to enable education, collaboration, and smart governance, Cleveland Clinic deepened engagement with its consumers around the globe – both providers and patients. They used Facebook and Twitter for daily wellness tips; LinkedIn for professional recruitment and YouTube for content on diseases and patient stories. Since the Cleveland Clinic established social media as a cross-functional discipline, it has seen a noticeable increase in website traffic, attendance at health lectures and new patients making and keeping appointments.

2. CLOROX: Used traditional media to communicate the many uses for bleach in the home but supplemented with social media to encourage usage in places outside the house. Clorox launched an online community, CloroxClassrooms.com, with blog and Twitter effort on Labor Day weekend at the beginning of the school year.  The Twitter page was among the Top 10 trending topics over Labor Day weekend and the blog was recognized by the Marketing to Mom Coalition and mommy bloggers for excellence in terms of delivering sharable information.

2. COCA-COLA: Used social media strategically and achieved the strongest global marketing integration ever with Expedition 206, a social media promotion where a small group of travel ambassadors went to 206 countries over 365 days to “generate happiness” and published on social networks.  It enabled global promotion execution and integration among 3,500 Coca-Cola marketers around the world.

4. COLGATE WISP: Changed the target for the launch of a new, disposable toothbrush, from the traditional Moms to young, urban men and women 18-25 who were active daters. They supplemented the traditional media plan with 8 ”Be More Kissable” viral videos. They created a Facebook App called “Spin the Wisp” and partnered with 8 online publishers. The videos received over 4.1 million views and the App was downloaded over 40,000+ times. Colgate learned the value of engagement because Colgate’s U.S. market share in the toothbrush category increased 5.6 points to a record 35.6% driven largely by the Wisp.

5. FORD FIESTA: Gave 100 consumers a car for six months and asked them to complete a different mission every month. At the direction of Ford and their own imagination, “agents” used their Fiestas to deliver Meals On Wheels. They used them to take Harry And David treats to the National Guard. They went looking for adventure, some to wrestle alligators, others actually to elope. All of these stories were then lovingly documented on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. Fiesta got 6.5 million YouTube views and 50,000 requests for information about the car—virtually none from people who already had a Ford in the garage. Ford sold 10,000 units in the first six days of sales. The results came at a relatively small cost. The Fiesta Movement is reputed to have cost a small fraction of the typical national TV campaign.

6. FRITO-LAY: Launched “What’s You Flavor” contest, as part of an integrated campaign, where social media was used as the vehicle for consumers to capture the diverse flavors and the diversity of people’s imagination in India. It leveraged the Frito Lays brand as a household name in India in a way that connected emotionally. The campaign attracted more than 500 press coverage worth 54 crores, the biggest in Frito Lay India’s history.

7. H&R BLOCK: Has learned in the weeks prior to April 15th, every question that is not answered immediately is a lost sales.  Tax preparation is a highly seasonal business.  H&R used Facebook and Twitter to provide immediate access to a tax professional for Q&A in the “Get It Right” social media campaign.  The effort secured 1,500,000 unique visitors and answered 1,000,000 questions for a 15% lift in business versus the prior year when there was no social media in the marketing mix.

8. HARLEY DAVIDSON: (HDTalking.com): Harley owners created a website and social community totally funded by users and user-generated content.  Here, Harley owners trades photos, jokes, where to find hard to find parts, advice on Harley models and ownership plus there are at least 7 mechanics on-call at all times.  HDtalking.com now has 56,000+ and cost to Harley is negligible.

9. HOULIHAN’S: Showed that social media drives ROI for small businesses. The restaurant showed that social technologies can be used in different ways to drive customers. Houlihan’s in the U.S.has around 100 restaurants, compared to their main competitor Applebees, which has over 2,000. With a small marketing budget, their marketing manager managed to drive sales directly from a private social network, run via Ning. The network was called ‘HQ’ and was launched in early 2008. By combining their social media campaign with email marketing, they managed to quickly build up 10,000 members and estimated that “7,000 to 13,000 people heard about our newest promotion because of an HQ member”. This shows the strength in running your own social network and how sometimes a private network may be the way to go, to offer people exclusivity and also encourage word of mouth.

10. JETBLUE: Started a Twitter account to have more direct relationship with customers and to listen and respond how they could serve them better and deal directly with any complaints.  They now have over 1.6 million followers.

11. MTV: Premiered Skins — an Americanized version of the acclaimed British teen drama. In addition to traditional media and Skins.tv, a central community regularly updated with content (including trailers and sneak peeks), a Tumblr blog – we are skins, Twitter handle –@skinsTV and a Facebook Fan Page, MTV used a number of innovative social apps to develop awareness and brand affinity for the show: Skins drew 3.26 million total viewers, outperforming the launches of competitive scripted shows across both cable and network in its core demo (12-34), including CW’s “Gossip Girl” and ABC Family’s “Pretty Little Liars.”

12. OLD SPICE: Managed to gather some pretty impressive stats that show the money where the buzz is. The reach of the Old Spice campaign is not in doubt, but did it actually impact sales? Since the original campaign launched with ‘Mustafa’, sales increased by 27% year on year. But in the 3 months after the height of the campaign, sales were up by 55%, reaching 107% in the final month of the social media campaign. And of course, Old Spice is now the #1 body wash brand for men. However you choose to look at the campaign, these figures stand up to show that a social media campaign, well executed and combined with traditional media, can drive significant ROI.

Do these case studies prove social and traditional media work better together to you?

Social CRM represents an important marketing milestone because it combines social marketing and science.

Social CRM (Customer Relationship Management) marries mass, word-of-mouth, personal interactions with the principles of a sophisticated and software-based discipline; one that is more associated with 1-to-1 than 1-to-many relationships and B2B than B2C marketing. Because it connects many audiences plus is digital and measurable, Social CRM holds great promise for many marketers.

It is still early in its life cycle so there are different definitions and some think Social CRM is more of a buzzword than a real thing. But there are very smart CRM experts who believe it is a powerful tool that is going to with us for some time as the chart above shows.

To judge for yourself, here are 21 ways Social CRM is explained and shown by experts.

1. Social CRM enhances the relationship aspect of CRM and builds on improving the relationship with more meaningful interactions. - Altimeter
2. [Social] CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improve human interaction in a business environment. – Oliver Blanchard
3. Social CRM is the process by which organizations make clients an integral asset in the management of productive relationships. - Mark Bonnell
4. Social CRM is a business philosophy that expands the borders of traditional customer relationship management beyond information, process and technology to people, conversations, and relationships. - Jas Dhillon
5. Social CRM captures both the tools AND the processes around the tools to: 1) leverage crowd sourcing customer ideas, 2) apply the wisdom of crowds to those ideas, 3) create a public customer ecosystem, 4) take the customer experience and communication to the time, place and method the customer prefers and 5) increase customer intimacy and empowerment. - Michael Fauscette
6. Social CRM is a strategy for harnessing communities to support customers and prospects, as well as sales, marketing and customer service organizations, along a purposeful and mutually beneficial business process - Gartner
7. Social CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s programmatic response to the customer’s control of the conversation. - Paul Greenberg
8. Social CRM is the business strategy of engaging customers through Social Media with goal of building trust and brand loyalty. – Harish Kotadia, PH.D
9. Social CRM is customer relationship management fostered by communication with customers through social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. – Jacob Morgan
10. Social CRM is a strategy to engage customers in a mutually beneficial conversation through the use of various technology platforms. - Tim Sanchez
11. Social customer relationship management (Social CRM) refers to the use of social media and social media techniques to engage a business’s customer base. - Technopedia
12. Social CRM is the integration of social media and CRM. Literally: Social + CRM. If you don’t have both, you don’t have Social CRM. - Bob Thompson
13. Social CRM or SCRM is a business strategy that enables brands to proactively identify, engage and build advocacy with customers through social media in real time. - Kohiben Vodden
14. A process to monitor, engage and manage conversations and relationships with existing and prospective customers and influencers across the internet, social networks and digital channels. - Martin Walsh
15. Social CRM builds upon CRM by leveraging a social element that enables a business to connect customer conversations and relationships from social networking sites in to the CRM process. - Webopedia
16. (Social CRM) is the use of social and traditional CRM tools and processes to support a strategy of customer engagement. – ZD Net

Since a picture is worth a 1000 words, here are 5 charts that show how Social CRM is defined.

From Brent Lear

From CapGemini

From CMSWire

From Mashable

From Social Media Examiner

And here’s one more definition – my own. Social CRM is the knowledge and tools to build personal and social relationships that result in business growth and profits that are measurable and scalable.

What’s your expert opinion on Social CRM?

Peter Drucker said: “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.”  This succinctly stated truth is the essential requirement for every brand.

Although Peter left us in 2005, I think he would agree the spark that keeps the customer relationship going is relevant content. It’s a fundamental way to create trust by proving you understand what your audience values.

For some more revealing percentages, here are 42 reasons every brand needs a content marketing strategy in 2012.

1. 93% of CMO’s plan to use some form of user generated content in their marketing effort this year
2. 92% of shoppers have more confidence in information sought online versus a salesperson or some other source
3. 90% of all purchase decisions begin on the internet
4. 90% of CMO’s participate in an average of 3 or more social media activities
5. 84% of brand managers says they use online videos on their brand websites for marketing product and services
6. 81% of CMO’s say they plan to track social media activities to revenues in order to determine ROI. However, only 40% actually do.
7. 80% of traffic to a web site begins with search query
8. 78% of marketers believe content is key to the success of their organization but only 49 have a content strategy in place
9. 78% of B2B marketers say generating high quality leads is their top priority
10. 77% of search users choose organic over paid search listings
11. 74% of consumers rely on social networks to help them make a purchase decision
12. 73% of companies now use social media for marketing
13. 66% of companies report using online video for brand awareness; 21% for lead generation and 12% for ecommerce/sales
14. 66% of marketers says their greatest concern is lead generation; only 17% say it’s brand awareness
15. 65% of consumers report a digital brand experience changed their opinion about a product or service
16. 62% click a link on the first page of search engine results
17. 61% of marketers say they implement a social media strategy for lead generation
18. 60% of retailers use customer reviews as a form of content marketing
19. 60% of brand managers says they are going to increase spending for online videos in the next 12 months
20. 55% of the time people spend on the internet is directly related to content consumption
21. 55% of companies use case studies as part of their content marketing strategy
22. 51% use a blog for content marketing
23. 51% of marketers say they are going to increase content marketing spending within the next 12 months
24. 49% of shoppers have made a purchase based on a recommendation from a social network
25. 44% of all content shared on internet comes from Facebook
26. 43% of companies says they are writing “white papers” and sharing them online as part of their content marketing
27. 43%of companies report higher click-through on RSS feeds with reviews than without
28. 42% of consumers say, when shopping online, they prefer to look for an answer online
29. 40% or Republican and 38% of Democrats use social network sites to become more polictically involved
30. Only 38% of consumers say they watch an online video in its entirety
31. 32% of consumers now browse or research products at least once a month on mobile devices
32. 26% higher conversion results for products when they have product reviews
33. 26% of total marketing budgets are allocated to content marketing by B2B marketers
34. 25% of search results for the world’s 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
35. Only 21% of branded mobile apps now contain videos. However, 70 of brand manager says they are going to add videos to their mobile apps within the next 12 months
36. 14% of B2B marketers say they send e-mails on an opt-out basis; down from 23% a year ago
37. Only 2.6% of all brands views occur through off-site embeds of branded videos
38. 300 other companies compete with Facebook for content sharing
39. 30 minutes is the average that people watch online videos every day
40. E-mail providers, such as Yahoo, AOL and Gmail, all use the number of time a consumers hits the “report spam” button as their #1 criteria for sending future e-mails to that consumer
41. Companies with over 1000 employees use an average of 9 content marketing tactics
42. Companies with under 10 employees use an average of 6 content marketing tactics

Laurence Peter, the educator who developed the Peter Principle said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up someplace else.” The numbers clearly state content marketing is on the rise but, before you jump in, have a content marketing strategy.

NOTE: The facts and statistics in this post all feature studies conducted within the last year. The sources include: Nielsen, eMarketer, comScore, Edelman Digital, BazaarVoice, MediaPost, Webbiquity among others with appreciation.

The number, 42, was deliberately chosen to acknowledge the great work Junta42 and Joe Pulizzi do in content marketing.

In the compilation of the stats, the best infographic I came across on content marketing comes from Marketo and was passed along by Wendy Emerson at business2community.com because a picture is worth 1000 words. It is below.

Will your brand have a content marketing strategy to create and keep customers in 2012?

In 1899, the first edition of Who’s Who in America was published.  Its’ purpose: To profile leaders influencing the nation’s development. For a long time, we’ve accepted third-party authorities to tell us who influences and who matters.

When Klout was launched in 2009, it quickly became the authority for Who’s Who in social media. It used data from Twitter and Facebook, then LinkedIn, Foursquare and YouTube, to measure a person’s influence across their social network. Authority is better if it’s earned rather than assumed. Does Klout deserve to be the authority?

Here are 6 foundational faults with Klout.

1. A ROLE NOT CLEARLY DEFINED: Klout assumed, not earned, the position of “Standard of Influence” (in social media). They said they “measure influence based on your ability to drive action.” What action? Unlike Who’s Who that says it looked for actions that prove influence on our nation’s development, the action Klout drives is not clear, nor does it result in real positive change.

2. SELLING OUT: A benefit to Klout is you can get Klout Perks. They get “distributed to select influencers based on their topics of authority, location and score.”  Isn’t that discriminatory and doesn’t it encourage people to sell out?

3. NO CASE STUDIES: On this blog, we promote the business value of social media to brands. You can find close to 100 case studies that prove social media ROI (see related posts at the bottom) based on hard sales measurements across every business sector (e.g. B2C, B2B, profit, non-profit) and social network (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs). After two years, we can’t find one substantial case study from Klout. Hmm.

4. GAMING AND MANIPULATING, NOT INFLUENCING: But, with very little searching, we can find plenty of anecdotal stories from people who have gamed the system like this one from a researcher who set out one week to drive up her Klout score and, with very little effort, did.

5. UNEXPLAINED GLITCHES: In late October, Klout launched a new algorithm. To many of us, it not clear why except it caused a dramatic and unexpected decrease in the Klout scores to most users. At about the same time, Google announced it reworked its algorithm to give greater importance to recency of content because so many people now look to social networks for the most recent news. We all got it and it made perfect sense. Can anyone explain the new or old, for that matter, Klout algorithm?

6. SOCIAL MEDIA SHOULDN’T BE ABOUT KEEPING UP WITH THE JONES: Do we need a status symbol for participating in social media? Shouldn’t we just do it because we enjoy it.

This week, the Pew Study came out with findings about how we use social media:

• 67 percent said the major reason they use social networks is to stay in touch with current friends
• 64 percent to stay in touch with family members and 50 percent to connect with old friends they had lost touch with.

Pew didn’t mention the percentage that was checking their Klout scores. What does this say to you?

Related Posts

34 case studies that prove Social Media ROI

67 case studies that prove Social Media ROI

16 case studies that prove Social CRM

12 case studies that prove Social Commerce ROI

Social commerce is the merger of social media and ecommerce.

It aligns human behaviors with buying behaviors because:

• 90% of all purchase decisions begin online
• 75% of consumers shop online before they buy offline
• 85% are looking for an independent review
• 78% of people trust the recommendations of other people
• They have an average of 130 friends on social networks
• 14% of people trust advertising
  Only 18% of TV advertising campaign ever achieve a positive return on investment

1. INTEREST IN SOCIAL MEDIA CONTINUES TO DOUBLE EACH YEAR: The number of people who search “social media,” either those exact words or those words in a phrase, continues to climb.

2.ALMOST 1/2 OF EACH HOUR WE NOW SPEND ON THE INTERNET IS ON SOCIAL NETWORKS. Doesn’t it make sense we’d rather buy there than log-off and then log back on?

3. WHEN WE BUY AT RETAIL, 30%+OF US BUY FROM RETAILERS’ SOCIAL NETWORKS; 50%+ POST COMMENTS AND THE SIGNIFICANT MAJORITY OF US CLICK THROUGH TO THEIR WEBSITES.  Wouldn’t you want your business to benefit from these incremental sales?

4. #1 REASON PEOPLE “LIKE” A BRAND ON FACEBOOK IS TO RECEIVE DISCOUNT AND PROMOTIONS. #2 is to show their support for the brand. Just like any relationship, this say if you show me some love, I’ll “like” you back.

5. OVER 40% OF THE TIME WE’RE ON TWITTER, WE”RE LEARNING ABOUT PRODUCTS AND SHARING OPINIONS ABOUT THEM; 20% OF THE TIME, WE’RE ACTUALLY BUYING THEM. We’re doing as much researching and purchasing as we are Tweeting.

6. 41% OF PEOPLE WHO USE LINKEDIN SAY THEY’VE GENERATED BUSINESS FROM IT. That’s in addition to those who use it to look for jobs and for recruitment.

7. SOCIAL COMMERCE IS PREDICTED TO GROW ABOUT 50% A YEAR FOR AT LEAST THE NEXT THREE YEAR. Sales will total $30 billion ($14 billion in the U.S.) – Source: Booz & Company

8. BY ABOUT THAT TIME, MORE PEOPLE WILL ACCESS THE INTERNET FROM MOBILE DEVICES THAN DESKTOPS. There are many reasons to expect mobile will increase the time we spent on social networks and make shopping easier and more fun.

9. SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE FASTEST GROWING CATEGORY ON MOBILE. At this rate in a few years, it’s also likely to be the biggest.

10. 60% OF US USE MOBILE TO SEARCH AND FIND DEALS AND RECEIVE THE BEST PRICE. Many also thought mobile made shopping easier and fun.

11. MOBILE MAKES SHOPPING MORE FUN BUT MOBILE ADS DON’T. Does that mean there will be less for advertising and more for social commerce?

12. THE HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW SAYS SOCIAL MEDIA HAS CHANGED THE WAY WE BUY. For decades, we would methodically “consider” and “evaluate” a purchase and then “buy.” Now, after we buy, we want to tell, “advocate” and “bond” with others who bought the same thing.  We “enjoy” doing it. And it’s because social media and social commerce give us the channel to connect this human behavior with our buying behavior.

Do you think your boss will take an interest Social Commerce from these charts?