Perspectives on the Digital Marketplace

Increasingly brands and individuals are beginning to understand the impact of Online Reputation Management or ORM as some call it. As consumers increasingly use search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to search for information (to the tune of 400M searches per day by the way) the content they view whether company issued, mainstream media reported, or consumer generated represents a portrait of that brand or individual.

For many the challenge is does your brand look more like a Dali when you want it to be a Van Dyck? The way I think of ORM and that brand portrait is that it more like a Chuck Close. The picture that people see is actually hundreds, thousands, or millions of individual snapshots that when viewed in aggregate reveal the total picture of your brand.

A recent study by Brand Reputation, a brand communications firm, surveyed over 800 consumers to determine if online reviews influenced their buying behavior. The answer was overwhelmingly yes, but varies interestingly enough by vertical or product type. These results demonstrate the need for brands to monitor, manage and protect the brands related to online chatter – be it positive or negative. The survey revealed that around 84% of consumers were more likely to search the Internet for reviews before making a purchase. This isn’t surprising given the increased desire for reliability, a good deal and value thanks to overall economic climate. If marketers aren’t already monitoring their online reputations this should serve a wake-up call considering 4 out of 5 US adults are online.

The survey found that, in particular, consumers relied on online reviews when investigating the following items:

• Consumer electronics - 56%
• Home Furnishings - 33%
• Apparel - 21%
• White Goods - 45%
• DIY & Garden - 18%
• Entertainment Products - 12%
• Sports Goods - 9%
• Food - 2%

The amount of social content from sites like Twitter, Facebook and blogs that consumers are creating which now appears and ranks in search engines any amplifies the importance of managing ones online reputation. Not only are a lot of other consumers or potential prospects viewing your portrait every day but is it actually constantly changing snapshot. Brands and individuals must constantly be looking at that portrait to ensure it is align with the brand, the realities of their offerings and managing information that is inaccurate. Like adjusting the painting a little or adding something new to the portrait to keep is to date and accurate.

To get a picture and score of your reputation - check out our truReputation score tool - it gives you a start about visualize what your portrait looks like.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

One of the amazing things about many of the new mobile devices that have been created over the past 24 months is their ease of use related to accessing content and information on the internet. This growth of new mobile devices has coincided with the rapid rise and proliferation of social networks and technologies for sharing and exchanging conversations, ideas, etc. Already social networking is one of the fastest-growing activities among mobile users around the world and one of the primary ways mobile users communicate with each other.

A recent study by eMarketer predicts the number of mobile users accessing social networks from their mobile devices will reach 607.5 million worldwide by 2013, representing 43% of global mobile Internet users. In the US, mobile users accessing social networks will total 56.2 million by 2013, accounting for 45% of the mobile Internet user population.

“Combining two much-hyped, but still-emerging channels—mobile and social—results in a developing opportunity for marketers,” said Noah Elkin, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report about the subject titled: “Mobile Social Networks: Marketing by Location Shows Potential.”

The three biggest destinations for US mobile are Facebook, MySpace and Twitter which mirrors desktop access of social network destinations.

Additionally, new location-based networks such as Loopt and foursquare are worth keeping an eye on as they work to link people, places and interests even though they haven’t yet reach critical mass. These new location based services offer marketers an un-rivaled way to geo-target ads and content that would be highly relevant to the end-users.

Many marketers are experimenting with both channels and some are even attempting to combine efforts and leverage as part of larger programs and campaigns. These new channels offer tempting areas to experiment and extend reach of programs and campaigns and in some case at lower costs and at more targeted audiences. It’s imperative that marketers understand these new channels that have emerged, determine where their customers are congregating, and interact with them through the mediums that they frequent the most. Below are some the questions that marketers need to asking themselves as they get active in social and mobile.

• Who are the mobile social networkers?
• Are consumers interacting with brands on mobile social networks?
• What is the outlook for location-based services?
• Is there an opportunity for marketers to use social networks to reach mobile consumers?

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Yesterday, I hosted and spoke on a webcast with analyst Jonathan Block form Sirius Decision’s about the value of Social Media for B2B companies. We recently co-commissioned and executed a study that revealed some very interesting insights about B2B companies and their adoption and use of social media.

A key data point was that while 40% of B2B companies are using social media channels to market their products, 50% are still at a loss as to how to show the impact that social efforts can have on their business.

To hear a full archive of the webcast and view the slides click here to learn more about:

• The full findings of the research survey
• How careful monitoring of social media channels is critical to uncovering shifting customer preferences and to address customer complaints
• Gaining competitor insight
• The role that monitoring social media is having on reputation, demand creations and sales enablement efforts
• A framework for getting started and key questions to address before taking the plunge

Enjoy it.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Happy customers are often equated with innovative and growing businesses. Companies have long understood that the key to maintaining customer happiness and loyalty comes from listening to where and how customers are talking about specific products and services, and in turn, creating a customer-centric organization. Once companies can leverage customer insight, they can take steps to learn, engage, and grow from this feedback—a process that has the potential to aid in everything from product development to customer service.    
 
“Customer experience is one of the most critical determinants of brand strength and business growth,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, in a press release earlier this year. Emphasizing the need to improve Web and contact center technologies and processes, Neale-May added that companies are “missing a major opportunity to turn customer pain into competitive gain at every touch point.” 

This voice of the customer struggle is nothing new and used to take place in various settings: in-person, by mail, over the phone, or even through fax. Today, the struggle to interact is compounded by the explosion of digital communication channels from email and instant messaging to social media. As a result, companies are also faced with the simultaneous diffusion and amplification of customer feedback. In a world where 1,500 tweets are sent every second through Twitter, companies are under pressure to interact with customers across these new channels. And without the culture, process, and technology in place, a company’s ability to understand and act on this deluge of customer conversations is severely compromised.
 
The main challenge lies not just in the complexity of the channels created over the past two decades, but in corporate cultures that, at least initially, have tried to shoehorn old practices into new mediums. Even as companies begin to understand the different nature of digital channels and social engagement, they’re slow to create internal structures, processes, best practices, and feedback loops to begin embracing the social media reality.
 
In some ways, this reticence isn’t surprising. Many companies understand that the nature of the new and rapidly changing world requires them to continuously adopt, build, migrate, and support new methodologies and mediums. But they fear that just when they have it finally figured it out, something new comes along to confuse matters all over again. 
 
A 2009 study by the CMO Council, in conjunction with Satmetrix, reveals that senior marketers admit their companies fail to take decisive, company-wide action to integrate the voice of the customer into key business and marketing processes. The study underscored critical deficiencies in the way companies measure, optimize, and leverage customer experience to drive loyalty, improve brand value, and increase business performance and growth. Therefore, companies struggle with:

• insufficient availability and aggregation of real-time customer experience data across touch points that should be shared throughout the organization (Only 38 percent of companies gather insight from customer engagements.);
• poor use of customer interactions to collect insights and intelligence or maximize up-sell and advocacy opportunities (Only 32 percent look for ways to turn problems into new sales opportunities.);
• lack of online processes and systems that track online word-of-mouth and drive customer advocacy (Only 17 percent use the opportunity to identify and cultivate potential customer champions and advocates.);
• intermittent or deficient monitoring of the customer experience to provide true and timely insight into problems and opportunities (Just under half report integrating and analyzing customer data, while only one in five has embraced intelligent Internet analytics.); and
• too few compensation programs tied to customer experience, loyalty, and satisfaction gains (Nearly six out of 10 executives surveyed said their companies do not compensate employees based on customer loyalty, satisfaction improvements, or analytics.).

The bottom line: nearly two-thirds of companies do not have a formal voice of the customer program in place.
 
Though trying to converse with consumers during this seismic shift toward social media outlets requires unprecedented transformation, it can also create limitless opportunities for feedback, sales, brand loyalty, and service.

As Laura Brooks, vice president of research for Satmetrix said, “Companies must become more committed to leveraging customer experience as a key business metric, but measurement is not an end in itself.” In other words, companies need to commit to improving their customer experience competitiveness.

All companies fall somewhere along the social media maturity scale which progresses from awareness, denial, acceptance, and change. Statistics from the CMO/Satmetrix study suggest that there is enormous opportunity for companies to move quickly along that scale. The good news is that while the landscape seems hard to fathom right now, there are some companies already leading the way, turning a universe of seemingly digital noise into actionable business intelligence. In doing so, these socially attuned organizations are finding their customers’ voice and, in turn, growing their business.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Well, is that really anything new? Haven’t consumers always expected attention and respect when they walked into a retail store or when they called a companies contact center? The rising chorus of social network users (4 out 5 US adults online interacted with a social site in ‘09 - Forrester) continue to up the expectation for brands and companies with respect to presence and interaction online. The 24 X 7 consumer and social technologies have enabled new-media users with an ongoing interaction cycle that necessitates attention from brands.

A new study that was just release from Cone reports that among new-media users, a staggering 78% of them interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools — up from 59% the year before. And that these users are conversing with brands more often: 37% say they interact at least once a week — which is up from one in four when Cone did the study last year.

At this point it is simply not enough to just have a social media presence (although 95% of users expect it.) Increasingly, consumers are looking for companies and brands that have Web sites (58%) and email (45%) which I find extremely low percentages by the way. But, to also have involvement in social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace (30%) and online games (24%). Additionally, despite the annoyance of pop-ups and other intrusive ad methods 43% say they want to see companies advertise online up from 25% last year.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Cone’s data, however, is that consumers strongly believe that social media is a two-way street, with 62% saying that they can influence business decisions by voicing their opinions through social channels. Additionally, about 25% have contributed their point of view on an issue or contacted a company directly (23%), and most want the conversation to be two-way — 74% expect companies to join conversations about their companies and brands.

Some of the data is inline with other studies I have seen and some of it seems a little be low. Will cross reference with earlier posts and provide updates with how this compares.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies