Social Media Marketers Should Get Ahead of the Curve

Recently I was reviewing an interesting article by Ross Mayfield who is an advisor to www.Slideshar.com and co-founder of Socialtext. He is also at @ross on Twitter. My compliments to him and his team. He has this to say:

As Chief Marketing Officers develop their social media marketing strategy for 2010, they are demanding business results. In 2009, 89% of CMOs tracked social media’s impact by using standard metrics such as site traffic, pageviews, and number of fans (as discussed in a recent survey).  However, CMOs expect that in 2010 top metrics will track more closely to P&L business goals––not just Web-related goals. The study forecasts the growth of adoption of the top three metrics in 2010, as follows:

• A 333% increase in tracking revenue
• A 174% increase in tracking conversion
• A 150% increase in tracking average order value

Such a shift in measurement expectation is significant. CMOs indicate a 300% year-over-year increase in 2010…

Recently I was reviewing an interesting article by Ross Mayfield who is an advisor to www.Slideshar.com and co-founder of Socialtext. He is also at @ross on Twitter. My compliments to him and his team. He has this to say:

As Chief Marketing Officers develop their social media marketing strategy for 2010, they are demanding business results. In 2009, 89% of CMOs tracked social media’s impact by using standard metrics such as site traffic, pageviews, and number of fans (as discussed in a recent survey).  However, CMOs expect that in 2010 top metrics will track more closely to P&L business goals––not just Web-related goals. The study forecasts the growth of adoption of the top three metrics in 2010, as follows:

• A 333% increase in tracking revenue
• A 174% increase in tracking conversion
• A 150% increase in tracking average order value

Such a shift in measurement expectation is significant. CMOs indicate a 300% year-over-year increase in 2010 in the number of companies that plan to measure social media’s impact on conversion and a 400% increase in the number of companies that will track social media’s direct impact on revenues.

The 2009 financial crisis probably did social media some good. Not that you need a ton of budget, but competing for scarce budget alongside more traditional projects is a creative constraint. As social media marketing matures, it will become a facet of marketing overall and it will be harder to spot a campaign that isn’t social. Part of that maturing is – you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Part of it driving activity that drives traditional metrics, like how you can drive conversions with LeadShare.

Social media marketers should get ahead of this curve. If you know you will eventually be accountable for traditional metrics, start iterating as soon as you can to find models that work. And volunteer to report these metrics before they are volunteered to you. This will require that you actively engage other parts of the marketing organization and give them stakeholdership in your outcomes. Take a look at your 2010 campaigns, reconsider your metrics, and incrementally realign your activities with the core of the marketing function.

My thoughts:

1. Social Media is bringing marketing and service people new opportunities of understanding their customers and also tracking/trapping events and customer needs. This is in addition to formerly understanding customers and their behaviors through the use of advanced data warehousing and Business Intelligence investments aimed at processes and techniques that (demand and) drive smart marketers actions. Teradata has been providing such solutions for over 20 years. But now the new era of faster communications, WEB 2.0 applications, and customer-driven interactions has catapulted many countries and companies into a totally new era.
2. Original Web Analytics are normally collected from logs or applications on  websites which focus on their sales activities and orders (and even revenues). But most companies have invested millions or ten of millions of dollars (or your local currency equivalent) and rarely are tracking and trapping the customers entering point, movements on your website, pages read (and how long), products reviewed and subsequent searches/views which define what customers seeks and would desire. If you had a sales-person on their shoulder watching them go through your website, wouldn’t he first be asking questions and second finding ways to fulfill the customer (purchasing or service) needs?
3. Investing in web analytics has now moved beyond the most obvious metrics (usually self-aimed at the business, not about the customers). The new age of tracking and understanding customers has enabled the opportunity of compiling data into a Teradata Data Warehouse and then using sophisticated analytical techniques and models to do what is necessary to take immediate actions and complete the sales or service cycle. In addition, Teradata has partnered with numerous companies, serving many industries, which extrapolate and move the web activity data to the Teradata Data Warehouse, then other companies provide applications and analytics that give INSIGHT to managers and executives who need information to manage their resources. This new area is known as “Interactive Web Intelligence” or “Integrated Web Intelligence” (IWI). This means integrating web data with your detailed customer data from all of your other channels. This is now (sort of) mandatory; if you plan to be successful in the electronic (PDA) world.
4. There are some excellent Teradata software alliance partners that provide modern-enabling tools for such gathering and analysis. They are WebTrends and SpeedTrap, along with others who provide additional infrastructure support and loading of data into the Teradata DW’s. 

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATION
Reporting at the end of the month, or even the end of the week, is no longer sensible or even useful. Latent “Post-Action” tracking and reporting, with delays in analyzing and then acting, provide little economic value.  In today’s world, using the enabling technologies and smart people to go with them, you should be seeking an ACTIVE Data Warehouse with ACTIVE Enterprise Intelligence. Your competitors are in the integration mode and now gathering web data, and then moving quickly to learn and use such data to manage customer retention, customer sales, customer services and customer satisfaction. Are you?

My best recommendation is to consider how much you plan, or have, invested in your customer marketing and/or web site. Then evaluate what it would mean if you took just ten percent (10%) and reallocated it to Integrated Web Intelligence (IWI). No one, including your customers and competitors, will find your reallocation to be less than magnificent in terms of ROI. BI and DW along with IWI are part of the new world of Web 2.0 and subsequently understanding your customers and prospects. Address them with your best RELEVANT messaging and you will win in the world of intelligence and revenues. What do you need to know? Let me know…

Ron Swift

www.teradata.com/ronswift