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Sarah Worsham

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Internet Strategy Forum Summit – Internet Marketing by the Numbers

Presented by Mike Moran, Distinguished IBM Engineer

Yes, an engineer talking to you about marketing.

You need to watch what your customers are doing so you know what to do next.  While there are a lot of things out there that you can’t measure – there are about 20% that you can measure that lead to a sale.

You have a website out there which probably eventually leads to a sale.  What things do you do that lead to that sale?  What things does the customer do that leads to that sale?

Measure ROI in terms of (Gain – cost)/cost. For transactional ROI look at how many transactions you have.  What was the ROI for everything you had to do to make that transaction happen.  For relational ROI, how much did it cost you to acquire this new customer.

Take a look a direct marketers. They understand what works and doesn’t.  How?  They create multiple versions of every marketing piece and analyze the results.  They test the responses to multiple designs and adjust everything based on those results.

Apply this to your website. Define numeric objectives.  Try different approaches.  Get real feedback and constantly look at performance to see what’s working.

For example, you want to increase sales.  For your website there may be two ways to accomplish this – get more people to come or to persuade more of the people that do come to buy.  Measure based on the increase in traffic or the increase in conversions.

Sometimes it’s not clear what metric to use, so just choose one and stick with it.  You’re looking for a trend so just consistently measure the same thing.

Conclusion – Respond to your customers. Change things until you see something start to work.  Do it quickly.  Instead of trying to figure out what to do, just do something.  Let the market tell you what works and what doesn’t.

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Internet Strategy Forum Summit – Creating a Social Strategy That Will Work

Presented by Charlene Li, VP & Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

The ease of posting anything on the Internet means that negative messages about your company may be higher in the search results than your own messages (ex. comcast technician sleeping on my couch – see YouTube).  This gives individuals enormous power, but it also means individuals help each other.

What can companies do about this?  Should this be something to fear?  It’s important for companies to have clear objectives about what they’re trying to achieve by using social media.  Think about relationships instead of technologies.

In the book, Groundswell, the following methodology is recommended:

  • P – People – Who is your audience? What are they doing online? How do they do it and when?
  • O – Objectives – What are you trying to accomplish for your business?
  • S – Strategy – Plan for how relationships with your customers will change.
  • T – Technology – Once all the other steps have been examined, take a look at what tools make sense to accomplish your goals.

People – Different types of people have different levels of online participation.  You can profile your customers at groundswell.forrester.com to see where they are on the participation ladder: inactives, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, creators.  Age is a major driver of participation, but as more content becomes available online, there has been more participation.

Objectives – Different departments in your company will have different objectives for social media:

  • Market Research – Listening
  • Marketing – Talking (have open-ended conversations)
  • Sales – Energizing (activating your most passionate customers)
  • Support – Supporting (your customers can help support each other)
  • Development – Embracing (customer ideas and feedback can speed up and provide higher quality development which better meets the market needs)

Strategy – Start small because you will make lots of mistakes.  Think big about how this can transform your organization.  Control is an illusion – the conversations about your brand will happen whether or not you participate.  Understand what motivates people to participate – very rarely is monetary – they want to help, make a difference, be heard, and be part of a community.

Technology – This will depend on where the people you want to reach are already.  It may make more sense to participate in an existing community than to start your own.

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What Social Networks Should I Join to Promote My Business Website?

Social networks are a hot topic right now.  Just last night I had a client ask me, “Should I join Facebook? I don’t understand how to use Facebook or MySpace.”  Just like any business (good) decision, what social networks to join takes a bit of thought in order to get the results you’re looking for.  And that is exactly the first question to ask yourself:

What goal or problem am I trying to solve?

The answer to this question can completely change which social networks you should take a look at.  It may even mean that it makes more sense to create your own social network or community.

Where are the people I’m trying to reach?

Just because you hear about MySpace or Facebook in the news doesn’t mean that your customers or potential customers (or whoever else you’re targeting) is there.  Just like in the real world, certain types of people hang out only in certain places.  You need to understand where people are in order to get the most out of your efforts.

What will be the reaction to your message?

If you just jump into an established community with messages about how great you are, it can have exactly the opposite effect of what you’re saying.  People inherently trust their peers more than messages from companies, so you’ll need to take the time to understand the community and the people who frequent it.

Those are just a few questions to get you started with thinking about your business goals first.  We’ll take a look at how to answer these questions and some new questions to think about in future posts.  For some outside reading, Groundswell, put together by Forrester Research, is a great book on how to use social networks and community for your business goals.

Need Help using Social Networks to promote your Business Website? Get started with a free website analysis or contact us for a quote.

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