Entries Tagged 'Brand Management' ↓

Lisa Bradner, another of Forrester’s Marketing Leadership Professionals, just published a new piece of research on why brands should develop social media content. The report reveals how Forrester’s Consumer Technographics(R) research shows that loyal, socially connected consumers value content created by their favorite brands more than peer-generated content. To quote the report “this startling fact clearly demonstrates that brands with social currency have a unique opportunity to deepen relationships online.”

The key takeaway for marketers is to determine if their brand has currency, deepen engagement and interaction online with their customers and to increase the use of social media as part of the marketing mix. By doing the it “raises brand relevance, affinity, and loyalty”. I would add that by increasing these types of efforts a brand will also see higher volumes of conversations, more positive sentiment, and an increase in click-through/purchases online or off-line. I have seen alot of the Technographics data and this report is a great read and cut at that data. I would strongly encourage marketers to get a copy of the report.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Notable analyst’s, Brian Haven and Suresh Vittal, from Forrester Research have just published an outstanding and well-thought out paper about Measuring Engagement. The overall theme of the paper declares that “the metrics marketers use today fail to capture the supercharged social behaviors and intimate relationships people have with brands”. This is very active discussion topic with many of our customers and one of our TruCast platform’s key differentiators - in that enables the measurement of engagement that brands/marketers are having with their customers in the social media space.

Building on the framework that Brian initially developed around the four I’s of engagement: involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence the authors further detail how to measure engagement and prioritize metrics that are appropriate to customer purchasing processes. Some key highlights/takeaways include:

- Why marketers are failing to take action

- Utilizing an engagement framework for the new social era

- How engagement measurement strategy reinvigorates consumer insight

- Why marketers should prioritize the acquisition of engagement metrics

In sum, a framework and tactical steps are well laid out for marketers in this paper to support why engagement measurement will transform the marketing landscape and require new marketing skills, partners who get it, and convergent marketing technologies.

Well done Brian & Suresh

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Toby Bell, a leading analyst at Gartner Research, has just published a great new paper entitled “Policies and Procedures to Manage Enterprise Internet Reputation“. The Gartner team refers to the space EIRM or Enterprise Internet Reputation Management, which entails both search as well as social sites that can have an impact on corporations and brands. Although, that term is unique to Gartner others in the space like Forrester, Aberdeen, and IDC have dedicated analyst’s leading practices in this area as well. Toby lays out some ground rules and steps that organizations should be actively putting in place to understand and interact with search and social media conversations that consumers are having. I strong encourage brands to take a look at his findings, recommendations, and steps to enlightenment.

Some of the key findings:

- “Social media is an unfamiliar territory for enterprises, with very different rules for engagement”

- “…Social media blurs the demarcations between public and private information, increasing the likelihood that consumers will unintentionally or negligently say publicly what they meant to say privately”

- “Time scales on the internet are more compressed and the implications of a negative event can be far-reaching”

Net-net is that organizations need to understand this medium and have a plan for understanding, interacting, and engaging with consumers that are already talking about them.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

JWT Boom, a division of the leading communications and marketing firm JWT, which is focused on helping brands market and communicate with the Boomer demographic. Under one roof they have collected the industries leading experts on marketing to this market. Every year for the last 7 years they have put on an event entitled LiveWire. I am speaking on a panel today from 1:30 to 3:00 about social media and Boomer participation. Plan to leverage some of Forrester Social Technographics data. I will get up a separate post on that later today.

The 1st session I am catching this morning is led by Joe Pine, author and co-founder of Strategic Horizons, who is speaking about “Rendering Authenticity in Boomer Marketing”. Joe mainly talks about the changes and challenges that many companies face when rendering authenticity in relation to the consumer experience. He shares two rules to live by: if you are authentic you don’t have to say your’re authentic & if you say you’re authentic you better be authentic.

Additionally, he points out some genres of authenticity: Natural, Original, Exceptional, Referential & Influential. Joe sited some interesting examples of each of these. I enjoyed his references to 3 word authenticity examples: Free Range Chicken, Fair Trade Coffee, and Conflict Free Diamond - you know that marketers have keyed in on something when they start to key on the 3 word statements.

Some additional points that impact brands: Heritage = Origin and History, Place = Venue + Event, more and more brands need to initiate “Placemaking” like what Apple has done with it’s stores - it’s an experience not just a retail store. Second great reference was ING entrance into the NY, Phillie, and Chicago. Third example is the American Girl Place — average time in store is 4 hours…and major bill when you leave.

Joe rounds out his presentation with thoughts around costs for execution and ROI for measurement and effectiveness.

Great presentation with lots of on stage props and examples.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Yesterday I conducted a webcast featuring Peter Kim from Forrester Research and Marty Collins from Microsoft. We had great attendance and shared some of the latest findings from Forrester and how Microsoft is implementing a comprehensive framework and strategy for listening, learning, engaging and measuring efforts in social media.

We asked a polling question of the audience and got some interesting stats that I thought I would share. The question to attendees was “How would you rate your organization’s level of social media engagement?

Attendees answered as follows:

a. Not quite ready – no current social media plans (6%)

b. Information gathering – learning more about this new marketing channel ( 21%)

c. Getting started - monitoring blogs and other online conversations ( 19%)

d. Formal program/initiative – dedicated efforts, processes and resources in place

to collect social media data and learn from it ( 13%)

e. Comprehensive program – a complete process for monitoring, learning, participating

and evaluating social media engagement and results ( 8%)

f. No Answer ( 34%)

Of the attendee’s that participated in the polling question (thank you) I found the break down encouraging around the number of marketers who are getting started, have formal or comprehensive programs - 40% of attendees. That is much higher then recent data gathered (a bit more informally) at some recent speaking and round tables I have conducted.

Appreciate everyone’s attendance and participation.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies