Strategy

You are currently browsing articles tagged Strategy.

Rant: You need strategy first…. DUH!

28 January 2010 in Discussion, Random Thoughts by Kate | View Comments

This isn’t a rant about people who don’t develop a plan before jumping into social media marketing.  This is a rant on people in the social media marketing field – myself included – who keep pressing the point about how important strategy is to a social marketing campaign.

[For the record, I AM COMPLETELY GUILTY OF THIS]

The problem is this – we all talk about it is as if it’s a new business concept, this idea of planning and creating a strategy, and thinking about goals and measurement and the bottom line.

They way we should be talking about it is this:

“First things first, starting social marketing in your organization is like any other business decision you’ve ever had to make, since the beginning of time.  Know your goals, set benchmarks, etc.  Ok, moving on, let’s now talk about social media and how we can think about it at a strategic level…..”

The strategy part is a “Hey, PS, don’t forget that thinking strategically usually increases your chances of success for anything.”

This doesn’t mean that a company can’t experiment and test the social media waters, and it doesn’t mean that many companies will completely ignore strategy – many companies have ignored strategy since the beginning of time.   But if they really want business success…. of COURSE they’re going to have to create a strategy!

No upper-level marketer gets to their position without having strategized for each campaign or yearly marketing plan, and this is no different.  Yes, clients or teams will need to be reminded of the need for strategy.  Someone will always need to be reminded.  But we don’t need to make a business case for the importance of strategy.

The thing is, if we just say this to our team and to our clients – “Guys, we all know we need to develop a strategy around this,” they’ll nod their heads in agreement because they’re smart.  And the discussion can move on to creating a program etc.

I’ve decided I’m going to spend <5% of my discussion on this topic, and if it gets into that territory, I will treat it as a given, indisputable fact that requires no further discussion. I will of course talk about the actual STRATEGY, because that’s where the real discussion needs to happen.

Maybe I’m being harsh, and – you caught me – I probably won’t actually treat it like that in a discussion.  But I sort of want to, ya know?  The discussion has gone past the level of reminding people that strategy is important.  This is not a new thing. this “strategy.”   It isn’t debatable.

So, a call to the industry: Let’s all accept that you always need a strategy for a successful business decision, let’s tell our teams or our clients, and let’s get on with it!

*phew*

[Bloglines] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Google] [LinkedIn] [MySpace] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Twitter] [Email] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

Post to Twitter

Segmenting your “Social Media Marketing” for Success

28 October 2009 in Explanation, social media by Kate | View Comments

(Note, this piece assumes that an organization has created a strategic plan for using social media, rather than having someone in a cube in the back office posting to a blog once a week).

I got into an interesting discussion in the comments section of a post about social media success over on B2B Voices with Mark W Schaefer, wherein I came to the conclusion that we were both basically saying the same thing, but looking at the process differently.

It really emphasized the importance of segmenting your overall Program in order to accurately identify success – or failure. This could be your business program, your marketing program, your sales program… in this case it’s the program that you’ve decided to supplement with social media.

It goes without saying that you should be setting measurable goals for your Program, and that they should all point towards money, whether it’s in a corporate setting or a non-profit setting or what have you. The dough may come in different forms, but let’s be honest, without it, you really don’t exist. However, the ability to bring in this money more often than not does not rest on one single mechanism, it rests on many.

All of this may seem blatantly obvious when I say it, but it really surprises me how many times I hear that social media is a failure because it didn’t sell something, or how many times people expect that a Twitter following is directly related to ROI.

The conversation should go more like this:

“The website traffic from the month of October increased by 40%, with 80% of that being from our new Twitter program.  Additionally, the number of sales that resulted from our website increased by 30%.  We can draw the conclusion that our Twitter program is bringing in valuable traffic to our website, which has always had a great conversion rate.”

Or, perhaps more telling:

“The website traffic from the month of October increased by 40%, with 80% of that being from our new Twitter program.  However, the number of sales that resulted from our website didn’t change.  Either our Social Media Program is not bringing in valuable website traffic, or our website is not structured in a way to convert viewers to customers.”

This conversation is entirely dependent on the goals you’ve set out for your Social Media Program, and then how they are linked to your other programs.  The process looks like this:

  1. Identify overall Program Goals
  2. Identify Components that will go into this Program to achieve those goals
  3. Determine the goals of each separate Component and how each of those goals is connect to your overall Program Goals.

So, if our social media program brought in more qualified leaders to our website (Component Goal), which was restructured to funnel any traffic to a new sales team (Component Goal), who would then convert them to users (Component Goal), we profit (Program Goal).  If one of these fails, it doesn’t mean all of them are failures.

Of course, if you set up your social media program to get direct sales, and that’s not happening, then yes, social media is a failure.  But just because your sales are not increasing when you start using social media doesn’t categorically mean that your Social Media Program is a failure.  If you haven’t touched your website in 5 years and you were never getting sales from it, and you’re hoping to increase website traffic with social media, your problem is probably not social media, it’s your website.

A couple of scenarios to consider:

Social Media Success + Sales Team Success = Program Success

Social Media Success + Website Failure = Program Failure IF the website was in place to convert viewers to buyers

Social Media Success + Website Failure = Program Success IF the website was in place to actually convert without the website (therefore you’re really running two separate programs)

Social Media Success + Customer Service Success = Program Success (this is an implicit one that addresses the Lifetime Value of the Customer, and assuming that with happier customers, you will get continual long-term share-of-wallet from them)

Social Media Failure + Sales Team Success = Program Failure IF social media was meant to bring increased leads to the Sales Team

Social Media Success + Product Failure = Program Failure (more accurately, this would be Business Failure, since nothing can support a lousy product)

I could go on with various scenarios, but I’ll stop….

The focus here is on the Component level and the fact that, far too often, people draw too-direct a connection between a Social Media Program (which, at first glance, can seem quite qualitative) and money coming in the door.  By highlighting a series of connections, you’ll be much better equipped to account for success, measure for it, and build an effective overall Program that is illustrated in stages, rather than “If I build a Facebook, when should I expect to see money in the door.”

This is why it’s so important to think strategically about what a social media program really means for your company, and how it fits into a Program that has been well thought out, and is well-measured.  Don’t go out and hire social media guru and expect him to move mountains unless you plan on allowing them access to your overall business processes and make darn sure that he is capable of making the above links and laying out effective goals that support your Program.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
[Bloglines] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Google] [LinkedIn] [MySpace] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Twitter] [Email] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

Post to Twitter

What’s in the word “social” anyway?

22 September 2009 in Explanation by Kate | View Comments

Over on the Econsultancy blog, they interviewed Jeremiah Owyang (who I’m a big fan of), who had a lot of really great answers to questions on his new role at the Altimeter Group what a personal brand means to him.  I had a quick thought that I wanted to share with you.

One of the questions – or rather, his answer – that popped out at me was:

So you don’t want to use the ’social’ word anymore?
Social is here today, and brands are wrestling with how to harness it.  However, there are more technologies coming, and we don’t want our clients to be blindsided by the next wave of tools that will empower customers and leave brands behind. Mobile, location based cloud services are all on the horizon. It’s more than social.
There was a knee-jerk reaction with social: “Quick, establish a work team.” But social is just one tool set. We’re looking at the broader set of emerging technologies and on boarding these technologies. We want to get companies ready with the roles and process to onboard these new technologies and conduct experiments where failure is acceptable. Rather than having the knee jerk reaction like they did in social. It used to be that all of a sudden, a CEO would mandate they must have a blog but not truly understand why and how it fits in to the corporate strategy. Most companies don’t have a way to allow new technology to come in. Most importantly, employees and customers can adopt these technologies without the CIO involved at all. If management allows for experimentation to happen, the successful elements will come through. Right now they happen in skunk works that are not sanctioned by management.

I love this answer because it’s how I and the rest of the crew here at the Other Side feels about using the word “social.”  We don’t consider ourselves to be a social media firm, and never have.  While we certainly do most of our work in that space, we also consider the “social media” part to be a set of tools.

We do marketing.  We feel strongly that marketing is a larger function in which social media components exist.  Online is a  channel that marketing should be developed in, and, as Jeremiah points out, not a knee-jerk reaction to an industry trend.  Facebook could be gone tomorrow.  Strong development of your brand in a place that people – your customers – are going to continue to go to is where the long-term value resides, and being able to navigate that landscape is the important part.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
[Bloglines] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Google] [LinkedIn] [MySpace] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Twitter] [Email] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

Post to Twitter

B2B Social Media Marketing: Why should you start?

5 February 2009 in Business to Business by Kate | View Comments

Marketing Profs had a great post last week about the benefits of social media for B2B companies.  They focused primarily on the research advantages it offers, with the following highlights:

  • Conducting research to understand more about a prospect’s or client’s “buying desires.”
  • Finding decision makers for certain products and services.
  • Extracting names from a given community for lead generation.
  • Getting answers to questions, reaching out to other experts.
  • Finding joint-venture marketing partners and creating various “cooperative opportunities.”
  • Connecting with past customers, keeping them up-to-date.

The research capabilities that social media channels offer are great, without a doubt.  But I think there’s more potential that it can offer B2B companies, especially in the way of brand outreach and thought leadership.  A few ideas are below**:

Brand Outreach

  • People often congregate online based on common interests or professions.  Many of these people are, as you guessed, employed in their field and, if not in a decision-making position, are at least closer to the decision-maker than you may be.  Join in their conversation in a valuable way.
  • Sponsor groups or networks that offer a forum of exchange and engagement for people that might be in what you consider your “target company” (see above).
  • Rethink how you communicate with your clients.  Offer them a platform of 2-way conversation.

Thought Leadership

  • Provide valuable information that establishes your company as an innovate thinker in your industry.  The end goal is to position yourself as an industry leader.
  • You could post a blog on useful industry information, again providing timely and innovative content to your readers.  Kinaxis has done a good job at this with their blog, The 21st Century Supply Chain.
  • Develop a complete content production program with such things as eBooks, white papers, webcasts etc and utilize social media channels to disseminate your information.
  • Part of the idea of a content production plan is that the information that you’re outputting is ultimately connected to your brand in the eyes of the reader.

And of course, there’s good ole’ brand management and brand equity.

** This is not about broadcasting your brand.  Developing a concrete social media strategy is key for success!  Haphazard entry into the social media space usually ends up being ineffective at best, and detrimental at worst.

Can you think of anything other ways that social media can benefit B2B companies?

[Update] There’s a more robust follow-up to this post over on B2B Voices – “4 Great Reasons to Start a Social Media Program as a B2B“

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
[Bloglines] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Google] [LinkedIn] [MySpace] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Twitter] [Email] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

Post to Twitter

Has new media left strategy in the dust?

30 July 2008 in Uncategorized by Kate | View Comments

I’m exaggerating, but I do think the plunge that companies have taken into the new media space has largely ignored the importance of strategy in a way we haven’t quite seen before.

Why?

The field of new media “gained” on us very quickly, it changes every day, new tools pop up while others disappear, and one thing will work for one company while it’ll wreak havoc on another. The focus on tools lends itself to a focus on tactics. A company that “gets it” and becomes successful either gets those tools, or they’re lucky, but the success alone makes more people want to jump in and get a piece of the action.

One of the big factors in this field is exactly the speed at which it’s developing: It’s so hot right now that people feel like they should be in it or they’ll die, but at the same time, it’s a different field almost every day.

Coupled with that is the fact that the field is open and can be used by anyone. It’s not industry specific. It’s not like a few car companies with a new technology (which can certainly cause failures for some and huge successes for others). EVERYONE wants to be in the new media space and it can theoretically be used by ANY company or individual with access to the internet.  Successes and failures start adding up a lot more at that level, and it becomes harder to identify best- or worse-practices.

The Problem

What I’m seeing more and more, however, is companies that both jump-in-blind and shoot-from-the-hip. Not only do they not really get some of the technologies or platforms, but they more often than not don’t think about an overall strategy for their entry, let alone incorporating their moves into overall company strategy.

I’ve seen the following trends (some of these are very general and not meant to be all-encompassing):

  1. Companies are going to PR agencies first, because PR agencies are the ones that tend to implement the tools.  Companies aren’t consulting marketers or strategists, and often times they aren’t even consulting the marketing department inside their own companies as much as they should.  Somehow they’ve decided that the two are separate functions.
  2. PR agencies tend to use tactics over strategy.  They gather up the new media tools and develop a process behind one or a few, and focus on the implementation.  Strategy is downplayed, if brought into the equation at all, and the campaign ends up being sporadic or misaligned with company strategy because it’s separated and made to be simply a process.
  3. Companies sometimes try and take new media involvement on themselves, and again, lose sight of strategy, and develop a very ad hoc system to play around with in the new media space, tool-by-tool.

What this leads to is a colossal waste of resources on a program that isn’t cohesive and doesn’t get the results one hopes for.

Fixing the Problem

Using a military example, any successful military commander that has ever lived will tell you that tactics are useless without a good strategy (or without a strategy period).  You can’t patch things together into a successful fort seizure unless you have the entire plan laid out and the objective made clear.

Any great marketer or any basic Marketing 101 book will tell you the exact same thing.  This was pulled from one such book, which stresses both the importance of top-level strategy to any strong marketing plan as well as the need to develop tactics and programs to support that strategy.

A few things companies can do when thinking about diving into this space:

  1. Internally align yourself with your own marketing department and make sure that everyone is clear on how this works into overall company strategy.  There have to be reasons why you think it would benefit the company and clear ways in which it can remain cohesive.  As Zach said last night in his talk on Corporate Blogging: “if you want to set up a corporate blog just to set up a corporate blog, you’re not doing it for the right reasons.” [disclaimer: his talk was far more interesting than that simple statement, for more check out his blog].
  2. If you choose to do the process internally, do not go tool by tool and use them separately.  Develop a plan, do research on what others have found beneficial or detrimental, know how to use the tools and how they can work together.  Then make sure that transfers into a clear strategy.  Make the strategy detailed and focused, too general will lead to the shooting-from-the-belt syndrome.
  3. If you go to an external firm for help, I would suggest going with one that highlights strategy in their process.  If they’re not asking you for overall goals, what you hope to gain, they may not know themselves.

Obviously I’m a little biased, since I work for a marketing strategy firm that deals in the new media space, but I would suggest going with a marketing firm first.  Most of them have relationships with PR agencies that will then help you with the tactics and programs (although, for the record, we can help on the tactical level as well).  For instance, we have a relationship with Spotlight Communications for some of our PR needs: we can develop the strategy and then pass it to the communications folks.  Usually, since the project is split, the cost doesn’t end up being that much more, but you get a heck of a lot more in terms of taking the process from strategy straight through to program (which is what you should be doing anyway!).

You can also easily go with just a PR agency, but choose ones that are asking the right questions and identifying the right things concerning your strategy before they start talking about all the great tools out there that you can use.

Related articles by Zemanta
Zemanta Pixie
[Bloglines] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Google] [LinkedIn] [MySpace] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Twitter] [Email] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

Post to Twitter

Bad Behavior has blocked 212 access attempts in the last 7 days.