Marketing Strategy

–By Justin Albano, Director of Business Development at Bonfire Social Media–

B2B marketers and business owners often ask me if the benefits of social media only exist in the B2C realm. The answer is a resounding no. The core concepts of social media: establishing your brand as an industry influencer, engaging with your customers, leveraging brand advocates, and nurturing leads along a sales cycle are just as powerful in connecting with companies as they are with consumers. In fact, B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not [1], and 57% of B2B companies have acquired a customer through LinkedIn [2]. However, just like any other marketing tools, here are some best practices that will get you started in the right direction.

1) Know Your Objectives

What do you want? More customers? A better relationship with your customers? Both? As a biz dev guy I love “to do lists,” strategies, and most of all accomplishing objectives. Often, companies that I talk with are either focused on driving more leads or improving their brand’s perception and share of voice. Dependent upon your company’s objectives, you need to understand which, or both, of these categories your company falls into. Without defining your objectives, you stand no chance of measuring success or understanding the effect of your actions.

Action Items:

• Start macro and go micro. What do you really want out of your business? Do you want to grow a secure company that can be passed on to your kids? Do you have a quick profitable exit in mind? Start with your vision and let it set the framework for your strategies in every business facet. Then develop your bottom up action items, i.e. what will it actually take to get there?
• Set success metrics and milestones and review your progress regularly, not just at the end of the year.

2) Understand Your Demographics

It may seem obvious, but it never ceases to amaze me how few companies actually understand who their demographic is, what their buying cycle looks like, what motivating factors/events cause them to take action or where they get information on products and services.

Action Items:

• Create customer profiles that allow you to examine your demographics in a more intimate way. For example, Suzie is a mother of two who works full time, loves to play tennis and hike, cares about the environment, and prefers to watch movies rather than TV. Setting up these profiles gives you a great demographic snapshot and helps to focus your marketing efforts.
• Once you understand your demographic’s buying cycle, what info, education or resources can you provide to make their buying decision easier? This is not only important for brand awareness and brand perception, but should be the driving force behind your lead nurturing cycle.
• It is crucial for you to understand your industry’s keyword landscape. Which keywords are your demographic using to search for the products/services you offer or information related to your offering? Which keywords are obtainable? How do you currently rank for those keywords? Google provides some free tools for the Do-it-Yourselfers, but any digital marketing shop should help you build the list and give you the analytic insights that will enable you to make sense of it all.
• Discover which social platforms your demographics are already engaged with and focus your efforts there. Currently, there are over 800 million users on Facebook, 300 million users on Twitter, 116 million users on LinkedIn and only 60 million users on Google+ [3]. If you currently have an email database, run it through some social networks to discover who is already using which networks. This could save you mountains of time in the long run and allow you to target your unique demographics.
• Listen via social networks like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and forums, as well as online news sites. Once you know your demographic’s hangouts and keywords, you can listen to social conversations via CMS platforms like HootSuite/TweetDeck and by setting up Google Alerts that monitor articles, blogs and forums that are currently talking about your keywords.

3) Create Value Based Relationships

Social media is not the place for old-school messaging tactics, and the concept of protecting your secret sauce is dead. Company decision makers typically go to your website, not social networks, to learn the benefits of your products or services. Companies and consumers alike are actively searching for value-based content that makes their lives and their buying decisions easier.

Action Items:

• Offer value-based content. If you help companies streamline their processes, don’t just talk about how you do it; offer them free templates or How-To whitepapers that teach them how to be more efficient. Providing this type of value will convert prospects in to fans of your company and customers in to loyal brand advocates.
• Understand the difference between relevant content (e.g. interesting articles, company update s, etc.) and compelling content that provides value and motivates visitors to take action (either by providing contact information or requesting a demo).
• Monitor conversations within social communities, like LinkedIn discussion threads, and offer advice or input wherever possible.
• Don’t be afraid to give away the secret sauce. As we all know, understanding how to do something and actually doing it are two very different things. Some of Bonfire’s best clients are those who tried to do it themselves first and quickly realized that their time and resources are much more effectively spent doing the things that they already excel at rather than learning how to develop custom Facebook tabs, constantly managing social networks, writing blogs or producing webinars.

4) Leverage Your Current Marketing Mix

A common and dangerous myth is that social media replaces traditional and costly marketing channels with free messaging. This is simply not true. Social media is at its best when it is amplifying other marketing efforts or when integrated in to a well thought-out campaign.

Action Items:

• Install social plug-ins throughout your site. These allow visitors to share your content on their preferred social network quickly and with a minimum of effort.
• Utilize landing pages to capture leads and initiate your lead nurturing cycle.
• 59% of B2B purchase decision makers have used their smartphone to research products and services when they are considering purchases [4], so optimize your content and landing pages for the increasing number of mobile users.
• Include QR codes on in-print advertising and articles with compelling calls to action.

This is not rocket science and it’s not revolutionary. Instead, this is a new application of what the heart and soul of American business was when companies took the time to connect with their communities and develop relationships with their customers. As a B2B marketer your audience might be smaller than your B2C counterparts, but that means you can be much more targeted and strategic with your marketing. While a B2C marketer may segment their demographics down to niche communities, you can target specific decision makers within your target companies and develop a value-based relationship that not only nurtures the current sales cycle but also sets a positive framework for a long and supportive business relationship.

—-
Stat Citations
[1] Source: Hubspot, State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010
[2] Source: http://www.hubspot.com/social-media-monitoring-in-10-minutes-ebook/?source=hspd-affiliate-PID-3701805-txt-ad-social-media-10-min-day-ebook-20110819&AID=10933127&PID=3701805&SID=skim1024X498223X8a5f920e568fa93e07c8561649950bf2
[3] Source: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/b2b-social-media-marketing-statistics-to-ponder-099980
[4] Source: http://socialmediab2b.com/2011/09/b2b-decision-makers-smartphones/#ixzz1jmUIeJul

Ever since we discovered that social media was a viable tool to achieve real results in business, many companies have started seeking data to discover more about the reasons behind why people choose to follow and interact with brands on platforms originally created exclusively for individuals.

As we transitioned from traditional marketing to social, it’s tempting to ask questions about what we should do to get more fans, stay relevant, and exceed our success metrics.

After reviewing a recent study from ExactTarget, I realized we might be asking the wrong question. In a medium where customers are reluctant to allow brands to enter their bubbles, perhaps we should ask “What should we NOT do?”. It turns out that there are several reasons that people will not connects with brands online, all of which are becoming more important with every day that passes and the news feeds become more cluttered with information. Here are three reasons we can’t afford to ignore:

1. They don’t want to be bombarded with messages or ads.

“Bombarded” suggest that there is a ceiling to the amount of people and companies that your customers want to have included in their news feed. They just want the important stuff, the stuff that matters. This means they may not ‘like’ a page even if they are a regular customer of the business.

Making the choice to avoid direct promotion is a difficult one and may even be counter-intuitive for traditional marketers and salespeople. It is, however, absolutely crucial in gaining and maintaining a loyal fan base. When someone “likes” your Facebook page, think of it as the equivalent to subscribing to a magazine they love. They subscribe because the content is entertaining, informative, or beneficial in some other way. Would you subscribe to a television advertisement? How about a billboard or yellow pages ad? Of course you wouldn’t. Use Facebook advertising to advertise. Use Facebook pages to add value for your customers.

2. They don’t want companies to have access to profile information.

This one is a bit odd because “liking” a Facebook page does little to compromise personal information to the actual business. Yes, there are privacy concerns with Facebook as a platform itself, but business pages are not able to dig into profile information if the user has selected the correct privacy settings.

All of this aside, I can’t help but ask what is underneath the surface of this act of not wanting to give out information. I think it hints towards something much bigger: a lack of trust.

Trust is the single greatest factor in determining purchase behavior, creating a huge need for marketers to build trust with fans and customers. This is of course determined largely by the DNA and core values of your business, but there are certain behaviors that need to be adopted in social media to build trust – like being as responsive as possible. Simply responding to the vast majority of fans, whether the mention is positive or negative, is actually a way to build trust and also differentiate from competitors. Recent research has showed that more than 70% of companies completely ignore the customer service element of Twitter. This creates a nice advantage for companies whose streams are full of @replies, retweets, and mentions of their followers.

The bottom line here is, it’s irrelevant if we say we’re trustworthy. If we demonstrate that we’re trustworthy, however, it could mean a huge difference for our businesses. Actions speak louder than words. What level of trust do you think Starbucks and Comcast have with their customers?

3. They “don’t see the benefit of it”.

This might sound broad, but there is an important lesson for every brand in this one: make the value of your page as obvious as possible. This means you need to tell them WHY they should like your page, which forces you to be pro-active in putting them first. Why would they want to subscribe? Community? Information? Exclusive content or discounts? Whatever you’re doing for them, make it obvious. Simply adding “Like us on Facebook” in all of your communication mediums won’t get it done. “Like us on Facebook because you’ll be left out of something phenomenal” sounds a lot better.

So what can we take away here? Do a self-audit of your social media presence. Replace your sales copy with exclusive content and discounts. Get rid of your broadcasted message and ask your audience for their thoughts. Make them proud to display your logo on their profile as a business they support. Above all else, before you take action online, ask yourself “What’s in it for THEM?”.

There is a race happening you might not be aware of. The race is for how your business controls and manages your social media. With some major players getting involved and some serious money changing hands this could prove to be a sector to watch. In this post, I’ll try to quickly summarize the most relevant platforms and what kind of businesses they are best suited for. Most only focus on Facebook, but all platforms listed have aspirations to work with other platforms.

Involver was one of the first Facebook application developers and continues to push out compelling products for companies. Bonfire has worked with Involver in past and overall they create a good product. They have jumped into the platform management ring with their “Enterprise” and “Business” solutions. They are very similar with Enterprise giving users every feature and product they make. I’ll focus on the features from Enterprise. If you want to read more about the “Business” product, click here. Below are Enterprise’s capabilities:

• 24 available “pre-made” white label Facebook applications
• Publishing on a claimed 40 media outlets. Most notable: Facebook, Twitter, WordPress
• Post scheduling on Media outlets
• Bit.ly analytic integration
• Social monitoring for keyword alerts
• Message Sentiment Measurement
• Message workflow management
• Internal analytic dashboard
• Up to 10 users

Price: Starting at $2,749 per month.

Wildfire started as a small FBfund (Facebook’s investing arm) company “way back” in January 2010. They initially created apps for pages that were simple to deploy and required no long term contracts.

As of June 2011 they have 120 team members and thousands of customers (we have used several of their products in the past). They have big aspirations to become not just an app developer for Facebook, but a fully functional social management system. In June of this year, Wildfire launched their Suite product. Here are their Suite’s capabilities:

• Drag and drop Facebook Tab creator: This feature requires no coding knowledge and can be updated frequently.
• Content Manager: The Wildfire content manager will allow for social media workflow simplicity and allow community managers to schedule and assign content posting on Facebook. This feature is very useful for companies with large teams or publish content with a high frequency.
• Promotion Builder: This allows companies to construct giveaways using a straightforward interface — drag and drop the text fields you’d like to require during the sign up, tweak the banners, then enter the official rules and you’re good to go.
• Dashboard: Facebook analytics can be difficult, but Wildfire’s dashboard can simply success metrics. Their dashboard shows analytics that are more detailed than Facebook’s standard Insights and you can even chart your progress against a competitor’s.

Price: Custom pricing. In a statement they say “low hundreds” to “low thousands”

Buddy Media is the gold standard when it comes to social media management. I mean gold as in both expensive and the best. They have every feature you could ever want in a platform and are fluent in all major languages. This is very important if you are a multinational brand that wants to segment your social media community. They currently service some of the largest companies in the world such as Starwood Hotels, Sony, Southwest Airlines, American Express and Ford. In addition to their impressive client list, they also recently received an additional $54 million in funding to grow out their infrastructure. Buddy Media can do everything Involver and Wildfire can and more. I’ll focus on the “and more” for the sake of time.

• Drag and Drop Facebook page development
• Multiple language support
• Real time analytics
• Scheduling and posting on multiple social platforms
• Large team workflow management

Price: Customized pricing. Most plans start at $5,000 per month.

I hope you have found this information helpful with any decision making in the future. If you have any you would add that I missed, please comment below.

Videos can quickly grab a customer’s attention and stay in their mind longer than a photo or even the written word. But how can you make your videos more interactive? Allow users to not only view your videos, but become immersed with them.

Annotations are a trusted, but under-utilized YouTube tool that can boost both page views and subscribers for a channel. A video’s power can be enhanced by using this simple (and free) tool.

Two examples of annotation creativity:

Interactive Promotions/Games

Annotations can be a fun way to promote products. Instead of a video showcasing a new line of toys, Hot Wheels used annotations and turned their YouTube videos into an online game. Users can choose both the type of car and add-ons to race. While it takes a lot of planning and video production, the end product is a seamless use of YouTube Annotations.

‘Choose Your Own Adventure’

Many adults remember growing up with ‘choose your own adventure’ stories. The digital versions of these use YouTube annotations to create a fun story. Fun and interactive, they can be a nice way to promote products or services in story-form.  And, unlike their hard-copy predecessor, you can’t skip ahead and change your mind!

More Practical Uses
While creativity is key to utilizing annotations, this tool can also be used to increase the number of subscribers.

• Subscribers: By using the Subscribe link type, your video can have a great call-out for viewers to subscribe to your channel, allowing for more video views and greater channel reach.
• Linking : If your channel has a lot of content, annotations can link these videos together. It not only keeps viewers on your channel longer, but also allows for a deeper understanding of your services, products or mission.
• Promoting Other Channels: Does your company have more than one YouTube channel? Annotations can help link these by promoting another channel in a relevant video. This can help to promote smaller channels from a large, central channel.

Where to begin?
Start by mapping out your annotations. Whether they are simple links to other videos, words of wisdom, or interactive elements, planning is key. Try to create a virtual path where users will be compelled to spend more time on your channel.

The actual creation of new annotations is relatively easy. Be sure to keep in mind both the placement and type of annotation.

Like anything, however, annotations can get out of hand. It is important to remember what makes videos great is the actual viewing experience. Annotations should be used to enhance and not detract from the experience. By having timely call-outs it can help increase the amount of time users both spend on your channel as well as the amount they share your content with others.

Learn More

Here are a few great resources for getting started on a YouTube annotations project:

How To: Use Annotations to Promote Your Brand on YouTube – A great step-by-step guide on YouTube annotations.

YouTube Help Guide - A simplified guide that can be used as a resource when getting started.

HubSpot and Marketing Charts have released their Marketing Data Box, a quarterly collection of practical marketing tools ready for professional use. At Bonfire we are data junkies so we sorted through the stats with a fine tooth comb and summarized the key takeaways from the slide deck. We have also embedded the full slide deck for your reference.

Traditional Media Stats

• TV and Radio Ad buys are up
• Newspaper is down
• Online news consumption is up 17% and marks the first time more people got their news from the web.

Digital Stats

• Top areas of marketing growth: Website, Email, Social Media – in that order
• Trigger emails are on the rise (automated emails for certain calendar events)
• Inbound marketing leads (Blogs, email, social media, PPC) are 61% cheaper than outbound marketing leads (TV, Radio, Print)
• Cheapest lead sources (in order from cheapest): Blogs, Social Media, SEO, PPC
• Facebook ads have a 72.3% reach in the U.S.
• Facebook interactive ads (home page ads) have the highest recall of any social media ads

Smart Phones

• 1/3 of mobile users have Smartphones
• Time spent on Smartphones in order of use: Email, Social Networking, News

Online Spending

• Online spending is up 11%
• Youth online spending is up 9%

by Lisa Peyton, VP Bonfire Social Media
Deals. They are everywhere these days. With our economy in a serious recession, consumers are laser-focused on getting the most for their money and EVERYONE loves a great deal.

With the advent of location-based applications like Foursquare and Facebook Places, deals are becoming more relevant than ever before. The ability to geo-target a consumer walking into your store or down your block is a marketing first so it’s not surprising that many platform developers are jumping on the ‘location-based’ bandwagon.

All the hype surrounding these new tools makes it difficult for business owners to make informed decisions about where to put their efforts. So let’s examine the facts and compare some of the more popular applications side by side.

I chose to report on the most popular applications for location-based deal creation as well as those I have the most experience with. These include Facebook Places Deals, Foursquare, Gowalla and Yelp. I implore readers to comment with any information about additional platforms they feel have offered value to their business. continue

by Lisa Peyton, VP Bonfire Social Media

Last week Facebook began reporting on some interesting data within their ad platform. They are now including ‘Social %’ within the campaign data table (highlighted below) and ‘Social Impressions’, ‘Social CTR’ and ‘Social Clicks’ within exported reports. (Use the highlighted button to export a report and access the new social data.)

Facebook defines ‘Social %’ as:

The percentage of your ad’s impressions where the viewer saw at least one friend who likes your page, event, application or ad.

Targeting friends of Facebook page ‘likers’ has been around for several months and savvy marketers have been touting the power of such targeting. Until now, we had to guess at just how successful endorsements from friends were at boosting campaign results. I have to admit that this technique has coaxed me into liking some items on Facebook that I may have otherwise overlooked.
However, can social impressions make a significant impact on ad campaigns? Facebook is now reporting on data that can help marketers make this determination.

Targeting friends of page fans or ‘likers’ is as simple as ensuring that you have added the relevant page to the ad settings when creating a new ad. Within the ‘Targeting’ section of the ad creation or editing platform there’s a box where you can ‘Target users whose friends are connected to’ your page. If you are running Facebook ads, I would recommend checking to ensure this feature has been added to all of your campaigns. This will provide you with additional ‘social’ data and allow you to make more informed management decisions.

After taking a closer look at the new social data, I was a bit dissapointed with my findings. I didn’t see a clear relationship between campaign performance and Social %. Here are my key findings:

• Highest CTR for the month, 1.15% occurred on a day with NO social impressions. The same day also had the highest Action rate, again with zero social impressions.

• Social CTR trended towards being SLIGHTLY higher than overall CTR.

• Data fluctuated greatly depending on the client, leading me to believe that the ad image, copy and industry were more influential than social endorsements.

For example the lifetime stats of  two  B2C clients compared side by side pointed to little or no correlation between increased CTR and Social Impressions:

Client 1 -  Impressions: 1,864,982  Social %:  78.6% CTR:  0.041%
Client 2 -  Impressions: 1,451,355  Social %:  2.9%  CTR:  0.046%

• Actions didn’t appear to get a boost from social impressions either. Using the same example as above, the client that had the highest percentage of social impressions had the lower action rate. If social impressions were successfully sending more targeted and qualified users, it would follow that the action rate would be higher for accounts running a higher percentage of social impressions. When comparing all our client accounts this wasn’t the case.

• When comparing data there seemed to be little to no correlation between Social % and a lowered CPC. There was an apparent relationship between campaign CTR and CPC. Our clients running the lowest average CPC also had the highest CTR. But these same clients DIDN’T have the highest Social %, in fact our client with the lowest CPC ranked in the bottom when it came to social impressions with only 2.4% of all impressions being served to friends of page ‘likers’.

Overall, I feel this analysis points to other campaign factors as influencing campaign success more than endorsements from Facebook friends. I have seen the most drastic improvements coupled with compelling promotions and strong ad creative. With all the hoopla and hype over social endorsements, it’s easy for some marketers to overlook the basics. It’s still important to build a strong foundation focusing on the tried and true principles of ‘The 4 P’s: Product, Price, Place and promotion.

I’m eager to discover if other Facebook advertisers are making similar conclusions or if they are seeing more of a lift from the elusive ‘Social Impression’. Comment below with your own campaign results, trends or tips.

Acronyms. The technology community loves them because they shorten long descriptive names. The problem is many business owners have little understanding of these acronyms. While there are “official” definitions (SEO, SEM, SMO, SMM), the lines are getting blurred between which technique falls under each label. I will try to simplify these acronyms and show the primary differences. continue

Social media is changing the way businesses approach marketing. Budgets are shifting from print and direct marketing to a more conversation-based model.  It is important to take a closer look at who is developing your marketing strategy.  Who is this new CMO and how should she build your brand? Here are my thoughts. continue