Elastic Thought

Why Can't Marketers Accept Authenticity?

 

We've been at this social media stuff for a little while now and we've seen some changes over the past couple of years.  Companies have moved from a curiosity of the attention is has gathered, to a genuine wanting to learn, to now a tepid "dip the toe in" approach to trying it out.  And this is definitely a normal cycle to getting into something that is new and unfamiliar.

However, it still surprises me to see the marketing person in the room systematically dismiss the power of authenticity as a marketing tactic.  That is not to say that they are against social media, or utilizing any of the tools that are available to us in this space.  It's just that they are more comfortable to move the discussion around these programs as a "customer care" issue or a corporate communications issue.  As a legitimate marketing tool, the discussion begins to take an odd turn.

Our question is... why?

There is no doubt that these tools help with reputation and customer good will.  The difference is that those are marketing tools as well.  Marketing is a communication of value to the audience.  And in that vein, marketing can move beyond a communication of value to actually bringing value to that same audience.  In an article in Entrepreneur, they talk about something we have been educating in social media for a long time now: "People love being heard and feeling that someone cares."  Though their article is advocating for customer service as a marketing tactic, the lessons still apply to social media.  Engaging people in the brand and letting them know they are valuable brings a loyalty that other marketing messages can't match.

So back to the question of why...

Though there are a myriad of reasons (we're sure), one theory is the question of the return on investment (ROI).  Marketing has definitely worked out a great model for known tools such as direct mail, print advertising and the like.  However, social media doesn't present as simple of a model.  It reminds us of the question of ROI with regards to PR.  A lot of PR practitioners would avoid the ROI conversation at all costs stating why it goes beyond impressions, and why impressions don't have an intrinsic value.  Yet when P&G came out with their study that showed PR had a higher return than advertising, it suddenly was en vogue to discuss (even without the real details or statistical modeling behind it).

We believe that PR was more complicated because of brand PR, reputation management, grassroots, analyst relations, etc.  But there is a model--ask P&G.  And there is a model for social media as well.

Right now you can read/see/hear any number of reasons why you can't (and shouldn't) look to prove a return on investment.  Harvard Business School associate professor Andy McAfee says: "There is not enough ROI for figuring out ROI.  it is an intellectually bankrupt exercise."  Essentially saying that marketing is tough to measure in a vacuum.  It's financial outcomes come through a chain of cause and effect relationships.  Jason Falls says that "The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable."

But we definitely have been working on a model that can help.  As discussed in a previous post here we thought that validating social media measurement was important to getting the attention of the hard-core marketing research folks.  Perhaps this model can do just that.  And perhaps, that will get more marketers to engage in the authenticity conversation as a marketing tool and not a customer relations tactic.  Perhaps you can put a numeric quantity on human interaction.  The sales profession has had statistics that show the increase in likelihood of a sale based on how many times they "touch" a customer, the wine industry says a customer is 80% more likely to buy a bottle of wine once they've pulled it from the shelf.  Companies have monetized lead loss generation when negative postings hit the first page of Google, and so on.

So social media needs a model.  We can't continue to blog our way out of coming up with this model, and we have to respectfully disagree with  Andy McAfee.  We think that the person that comes up with a way to show real impact to the financial bottom line using social media (in this economy) is going to find that their time was well spent.  They just might have to look at all the points along the cause-effect relationships.

Now, does anyone have the formula for authenticity and trust?

(Photo Credit: Felix Heinen)

How Do We Measure Trust and Authenticity?

In an earlier post we began discussing how to validate social media measurement.  And there has been some great ideas starting to be passed around.  This is definitely an area to delve into further.  So, look for more posts on that in the future.  It may even be profitable.  And it could get contentious as Razorfish just filed a patent on their action tag looking to "own" a big chunk of this space.

But what about trust?  What about authenticity?  How do we measure that?  Certainly there are tribal rules to follow, and many have commented that trust is largely emotional.   Scott Henderson commented in his blog on Chris Brogan and why this Kmart moment matters, that trust is the most important currency in any economy.  This may be true, but I also see "Caveat Emptor" or "Buyer Beware" still dominate our economy here.

(This is the Chris Brogan piece in mention if you haven't seen this elsewhere.)

But the crux of this, really, is that trust may not be measurable in the sense of hard numbers, but it certainly can be attributed to the piggy-bank theory of deposits and withdrawals.  But why the huge withdrawal on something that makes little sense?  I guess that's the emotional part of this.  But really, is this so far from what happens everyday?

There are very few things that are devoid of ulterior motives.  Let's start with Rudolph.  (And not because a school is banning it from their holiday program, but because he's such an entrenched part of the social fabric of Christmas.  (And it's that time of year) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created by Robert L. May in 1939 as part of his employment with Montgomery Ward.  It was an advertising promotion.  Soap Operas were created by soap manufacturers to bring attention to their products.  And on and on.

Let's look at some modern-day examples.  Coke puts their brand up on the judges table in American Idol.  Is there really Coke in there? .......  Paula?  Extreme Home Makeover uses an extensive list of sponsors to donate to the homes they build.  30 Rock made fun of this practice with their bit on Verizon.

Are the judges less apt to comment on performers? (don't answer that)  Is Extreme Home Makeover less credible because they sell advertising and sponsorships?  And if so, how many withdrawals do you hit their piggy bank with after building so many homes for so many needy people?  Are the homes any less meaningful to the recipients?  Is 30 Rock any less funny?  Are you less entertained?

The problem here is that social media is walking a fine line.  It can't exist without funding.  Someone has to build the tools that we all use everyday.  Without funding, the tools aren't created, and we don't have a platform to communicate with.  Social Media is probably the first thing that did not start out as an advertising platform first.  It started out "pure," and there are those that will defend that.  But how long can it last?  Or, rather, how many deposits do the players in  social media's piggy bank have in it?

In an earlier post on PR 3.0, Dennis Howlett asked why does it have to be a message and not a conversation?  My reply was that it can be a conversation.  It is a conversation.  But someone is always looking to get something out of that conversation.  The example I used was "having a conversation with my boss to ask for a raise."  People have used the "cocktail party theory" to explain how to navigate through social media's murky etiquette waters.  If we go that route, I would say that the reason people go to cocktail parties is to network.  They network to get exposure.  They want exposure to be called upon for the next business opportunity.  But let's add one more point here.  They are usually looking for the business opportunity to make money to maintain a family.  So are they less credible for having a financial motive to being socially witty, funny, and a great person to have a drink with?

The examples roll on and on.  PR is the "credible" way to get "earned" media and they are not immune to this either.  Follow that chain, the article in the paper was influenced, most likely, by a PR person.  That PR person is paid a salary to do this.  So is what they pitch for a client flawed because it's just for a salary?  For money?

Let's tie these together.  Back to Scott Henderson, he states that personal reputations are more important than corporate brands, and that your character defines your reputation.  I believe in personal reputation, but how many blog posts are out there on building your "personal brand?"  That's the difference here.

Social media is building brands, but it allows individuals to be those brands. 

And why do people build those personal brands painstakingly?  Most likely, to be seen as an expert and be visible for the next business opportunity.  And that's OK.  I believe that the more sophisticated and successful players understand the medium and will not abuse it.  I also believe they can tell the difference between sponsorship and credible dialogue.  Especially when the money isn't even for them in the first place.  And even more so when they are transparent about their relationships and motives.

Izea may not have completely fine-tuned this yet.  But I believe Chris Brogan (and others) have enough deposits in their piggy banks to bring the ideas to the table with companies like Izea and make the monetization piece of social media more palatable for the masses so that we can keep social media about authenticity and trust.  Donating the toys to worthy causes certainly doesn't hurt!

Who knows, perhaps they'll create the next Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer?  (It has to be better than flame-broiled meat body spray!)

More to come...

You're Wasting Your Money

Getting the ear of the CFO

It's like trying to explain to my parents what I do for a living--getting the CFO to buy-in to more advanced digital marketing beyond some Pay-Per-Click and some banner ads.  It's getting better though (the part about the CFO, not the part about the parents).  But you have to speak to them on their terms.  Not ours.

So, instead of rehashing Twitter for business, or explaining how having great online karma will bolster their brand, I've had to go in with my financial guns blazing: you're wasting your money.  And I'll show you how.

Now I've got his/her attention.  Hey, their departments are graded on saving the company money, so why not help them?

Now, to back it up, I walked through the price of advertising in the "trade" magazines, the price of sponsorship in the directories, and some other standard B2B stuff for companies that "don't really need this Web 2.0 stuff."  Then we looked at the price of those--per head--on the call to action in those ads.  In some cases it got to over $300 per visitor to their web site!

Try it with PR too.  Just because the Journal gets X Million subscribers doesn't mean they all go to page B4 to read the 3 inches of column your agency secured for you.  Though we don't have statistics that show how many people go that deep, we do have statistics on how deep into search results people go.  Maybe page 3.  We have comedians like Brian Regan who poke fun at this a bit joking that he never finishes stories that are continued from the first page.  "And after a 9 month long trial the verdict came in...continued on A9.  I guess I'll never know."  So we can make a pretty strong argument that the number of people that made it back there in the Journal is substantially less than the subscriber base of the newspaper.

So back to wasting money--or rather, not wasting it.  We walked through cost of conversion for the effort of some social media campaigns, and how we can track who/when/where/how.  (I wish we knew the why!)  We walked through effort hours, we walked through cost per conversion, and the lasting effects of promotions placed on the web versus the newspaper and magazines (daily, weekly, or monthly shelf life).  And we tied it back to some of the measurements they were getting familiar with: pay-per-click (cost per click) and banner ad media buys (divided by number of click-throughs).

So we had cost per conversion, shelf-life, search visibility, and effort cost to compare.  All of which was (on a case by case basis) lower than what they were currently doing.  

They say to be successful in business, you have to build a better mousetrap.  We have the tools and creativity to do that now.  We just have to show off how many mice it catches rather than how cool and new the components of the trap are.

More to come...

Validating Social Media Measurement

I had a client that identified a $40,000 drop in converted leads and revenue drop every time a negative customer service blog post reached the first page of search results in either Google or Yahoo!  Now, they did not do a double-blind study complete with placebo control group to know this.  They were active in their SEO monitoring efforts and correlated those trends with their lead flow online.  Then, using their business intelligence, they were able to monetize the lead generation to converted sales, thus giving us that $40,000 figure.  Pretty groundbreaking stuff for SEO research just a few year ago.

I bring this up in reference to the panel discussion I was moderating last week.  The topic of evening was Targeting and Segmenting audiences.  There was a mixed group in the audience spanning corporate marketing execs to agency creatives; traditional and digital.  There was some fantastic research and examples given on how to slice up an audience and target a message directly to any particular slice.  There was research a-plenty on testing that message before it is sent, and even more on how those audiences reacted to those messages.  Did they buy, did they opt-out, did they pass along information to others?  We even had good examples of what to do when research finds these people opti-ing out, tracking them down and giving an updated message (pre-researched) to bring them back into the buying cycle.  Very fascinating stuff.  I loved moderating because I truly learn a lot when I speak with these folks.  I'm a sucker for books like "Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy."

But when I asked what was happening to their research, how they were adjusting now that the model has changed to allow those consumers to talk back?

Silence.

Not for long.  It's a panel in front of a large audience, and I'm moderating...so we quickly recovered.  Well, for a short time.  I wasn't out to stump the panel.  I wanted to drive to a point about a new type of measurement and get some verification that the big guys out there were looking at this stuff.  But, there wasn't much more we could add, so we moved on.

Here is what I would have liked to dive into further.  In the new world of social media there are different measurements.  We know what they are since we use them to justify projects and calculate ROI.  A lot of them have to do with web traffic and click-throughs.  But I'd like to work with a research company to take that further.  Is there a correlation between negative postings in search results and converted sales like we spoke about with my client a few years back?  Are there other metrics?  What do you think?

Here is a list of possible things to measure they may have correlations.  Please, add other stats you think would be relevant in the comments:

1. Community Engagement--this could be how many people wrote on your Facebook fan page wall or average comments in company blog postings (or even spiked comments mapped to action offline), and other measures of engagement within the community you've built.
2. Outside Engagement--not all conversations take place inside of your community, but they do happen.  How many of these other communities are linking back to your community (discussion focused, not just linkbacks)?
3. Online "chatter" -- anyone monitoring social media wants to see the "chatter" level high and positive for their company/brand, but is there a correlation between amount of coverage in the blogs, twitter, and other platforms to company reputation, or even better, sales?
4. Numbers--I know I advocated looking beyond these, but they could be useful in this type of research.  How many fans, followers, friends, etc.

Now, I know there are many blogs out there talking about social media measurement.  My goal in this post is not to add to the chorus, but to bring about a validity to the numbers.  To parter with the "traditional" market research groups to bring some more light to the subject.

I have the sense from being in the industry long enough that these numbers do correlate to measurable action in the offline world, but what I'd like to see is the down-in-the-weeds research groups proving these theories out as much as they do the traditional.  I'm convinced there are some out there that do.  However, their work has not permeated the industry yet.  Let's add to this list and get it to them.  Let's find the hard-core numbers our clients are looking for.  Wouldn't it be great to walk into your client and show with statistics and research (verified) that for every "n" number of tweets mentioning your company positively, you get a "$y" increase in sales?  I know social media is more about community, sharing, and right now, customer service.  But if we want to convert more CFOs to writing checks for social media, to get more dyed-in-the-wool CMOs to take up the cause and move away from what's comfortable, this would be a great tool to have in the old carpetbag.

What do you think?

(cartoon: geek and poke)