Part 3. E-Marketing Strategies.- Measure ROI

How do we measure ROI with Social Media?  Return on investment (ROI) is the measure of an activity’s results relative to its cost. The equation for determining ROI, in its most simplistic form, has been presented in a SmartBrief Guide to Social Media as: (Results - costs) ÷ costs = ROI

The equation takes two things into account: Money spent (that’s the investment) and the resulting revenue/savings (that’s the return). Anything that isn’t money (such as the time you spend maintaining your social presence) must be converted into dollars and cents before it can be factored

into your calculations.  Results come in two ways: Income and cost reductions. 

·       Income includes any time your social media presence prompts someone to buy a product from you, donate something to you or hire you to perform a service.

·       Cost reductions are savings on existing business functions that can now be performed at a cheaper rate because of social tools.  Companies often trumpet social media success by announcing results, but outcomes are only half the story. Seeing results from your social media efforts is great, but if you’re spending $200,000 a year to generate $100,000 in sales via Twitter, you’re not seeing positive ROI.

What are Costs?  Anything that goes into the creation of a social media presence can be considered a cost.  Some common costs include:

·       Content creation costs: This could be something as cheap as licensing photos for blog posts or as expensive as buying audio-visual equipment to create videos and podcasts.

·       Training costs: Did you attend a social media conference?  Buy a book or two on social media best practices?  Bring in an expert to train your staff? These costs all count.

·       Software costs: There are dozens of great free social media clients and tools out there. But if you’re serious about determining the ROI of your efforts, you’ll want to at least consider investing in a premium social media client because paid clients offer more robust features and better tracking options than free programs.

·       Labor costs: This is often the biggest cost associated with a social media campaign – and it’s also the one most likely to be overlooked. If you’ve hired a dedicated social media staff member or outsourced your social media efforts to an agency, that cost is easy to measure. If you’re doing it yourself or if one or more employees are working on the company’s social media presence in addition to their other duties, then the calculation becomes more difficult. Typically you’ll need to figure out how much time each person spent on social media and then multiply that figure by their rate. If someone is paid $200 a day and spends half their day on social media, the cost of their social media efforts is $100 per day.

Part 2. E-Marketing Strategies.- Amplify & Lead

3. Amplify  Once a consumer has decided which product to buy and makes a purchase, companies can use social media to amplify their engagement and foster loyalty.   For example, when Starbucks wanted to increase awareness of its brand, it launched a competition challenging users to be the first to tweet a photograph of one of the new advertising posters that the company had placed in six major US cities, providing winners with a $20 gift card.  This social-media brand advocacy effort delivered a marketing punch that significantly outweighed its budget.  Starbucks said that the effort was “the difference between launching with millions of dollars versus millions of fans.”

4. Lead  Social media can be used to lead consumers toward long-term behavioral changes. In the early stages of the consumer decision journey, this may involve boosting brand awareness by driving Web traffic to content about existing products and services.  Consider the example of when grooming-products group Old Spice introduced its Old Spice Man character to viewers, during the US National Football League’s 2010 Super Bowl.  The company’s ambition was to increase its reach and relevance to both men and women.  The commercial became a phenomenon: starring former player Isaiah Mustafa, it got more than 19 million hits across all platforms, and year-on-year sales for the company’s products jumped by 27 percent within six months.
Marketers also can use social media to generate buzz through product launches, as Ford did in launching its Fiesta vehicle in the United States.

Finally, social media can solicit consumer input after the purchase. Intuit, for example, has its community forums.  Starbucks uses MyStarbucksIdea.com to collect its customers’ views about improving the company’s products and services and then aggregates submitted ideas and prominently displays them on a dedicated Web site. That site groups ideas by product, experience, and involvement; ranks user participation; and shows ideas actively under consideration by the company and those that have been implemented.

Convert knowledge into action  Despite offering numerous opportunities to influence consumers, social media still accounts for less than 1 percent of an average marketing budget when most CEO's should be pushing it to 5% for maximum gain.

Part 1. E-Marketing Strategies.- Monitor & Respond

The new marketing environment strongly suggests that the most powerful social-media strategies focus on a limited number of marketing responses closely related to individual touch points along the consumer decision journey.  One of the most critical—monitoring what people say about your brand—is so important that it really is a core function of social media, transcending across the entire consumer decision journey.  Other strategies underpin efforts to use social media to respond to consumer comments, to amplify positive sentiment and activity, and to lead changes in the behavior and mind-sets of consumers.

1. Monitor  Knowing what’s said online about your products and services.  This should be a default social-media function, taking place constantly.   It’s also critical to communicate such feedback within the business quickly: whoever is charged with brand monitoring must ensure that information reaches relevant functions, such as communications, design, marketing, public relations, or risk.

2. Respond  Responding in order to counter negative comments and reinforce positive ones will only increase in importance.  The responsibility for taking action may fall on functions outside marketing, and the message will differ depending on the situation.  No response can be quick enough, and the ability to act rapidly requires the constant, proactive monitoring of social media—on weekends too.   By responding rapidly, transparently, and honestly, companies can positively influence consumer sentiment and behavior.

How Social Media influences Consumers

Companies can now create critical new brand assets (such as content from customers or insights from their feedback), open up new channels for interactions (Twitter-based customer service, Facebook news feeds), and completely reposition a brand through the way its employees interact with customers or other parties.

Companies diligently establish Twitter feeds and branded Facebook pages, but few have a deep understanding of exactly how social media interacts with consumers to expand product and brand recognition, drive sales and profitability, and develop loyalty.   Recognizing the speed and diversity of social media feeds and how to measure the cost benefit of a media campaign remain critical factors in managing through the quagmire of how senior leaders can harness social media to shape consumer decision making in predictable ways.

In order to demystify social media,  we have identified its four primary functions—to monitor, respond, amplify, and lead consumer behavior—and linked them to the journey consumers undertake when making purchasing decisions.   Being able to identify exactly how, when, and where social media influences consumers helps executives to craft marketing strategies that take advantage of social media’s unique ability to engage with customers.

E-marketing: Painless profit for endless gain

Step 4: Maximize the Impact of Paid Search & On-Site Banner Ads in Driving Customer Engagement?

Innovative e-marketing can create painless profit with endless gain.  Companies are realizing the importance of creating a strong online presence not only in the organic search results but also in the paid advertisements that appear alongside those results. 

According to Mediative, organizations can significantly enhance their digital presence and move customers from awareness to purchase through on-line banner advertizing.

The measurability of pay-per-click ads enable marketers to monitor the traffic generated by the listings, and the performance of their online advertising campaigns.  However, paid search isn’t just about driving additional traffic to a website.  It can also have significant effects on branding metrics such as brand affinity and recall, message recall, and purchase intent.

Top ads have much stronger click-through-rates (CTR's) than ads on the right side.  Buying intent also increases with top ads and this holds true amongst brand name and private labels.

According to Eric Morris, Mobile Lead of Google, there are three trends to embrace: Get your website to Google page one through proper website design complete with tags. You should:

1. Measure everything on your website and even cross brand yourself with Google Search.

2. Use sight, sound and motion to attract and retain your customer.

              3. Make sure your website is adaptable to Mobility recognizing the new world of constant connectivity.

E-marketing: Painless profit for endless gain

Step 3: Advertise across Multi-Media.  How is New Media changing the Marketing Landscape?  .   Social media enables targeted marketing responses at individual touch points along the consumer decision journey.  

Out-of-Home Channels (OOH)

• Billboards and transit ads, followed by ads in shopping malls and restaurants, have the greatest reach among OOH channels.

• Ads within medical clinics, health clubs, bars, and on campus can be effective in reaching specific demographic and lifestyle targets.

• Each month 7 in 10 visit a mall, 6 in 10 a restaurant, 1 in 4 a gym, 1 in 5 a medical clinic, and 1 in 6 a campus.

• On-the-go consumers can use their mobile phone to interact with OOH posters to download coupons, view product demos, enter contests, obtain samples, compare product information and make a purchase.

Mobile

“Canadians are embracing mobile technology and using their Smartphones more in store aisles,”

• There’s a huge increase in Smartphone penetration among Canadian consumers with 37% of Canadian shoppers owning a Smartphone, up rapidly from 24% reported last year; however still below the 50% penetration among American shoppers in a more competitive mobile market.

• A third of shoppers own an iPhone or a Blackberry device, while 21% have a phone running Android OS.

• Over 50% of planned purchases are for iPhones, while Blackberry and Android phones each account for 20% of planned purchases.

• On the tablet front, 14% of shoppers own an internet-enabled tablet, but an additional 20% say they plan to purchase within the year.

• The role of Smartphones in retail is growing with 60% of shoppers interested in using their phone to download or scan coupons and over 50% using them to store their shopping lists. 40% are willing to make instant purchases using their phone.

• 88% of Smartphone owners are aware of quick response (QR) codes while 40% use it and new technologies such as Near Field Communication (NFC) are gaining popularity.

E-marketing: Painless profit for endless gain

Step 2: Understand the Interaction between New and Traditional Media
BrandSpark International’s Canadian Shopper Study reveals shopper's trends and how they embrace multi-media.

Understand shopping behavior:  Marketers need to get their products in shoppers’ consideration sets before the store.

• While 37% have a standard shopping list they each week, only 15% decide most of their purchases in store.

• Planning begins at home with 96% reading supermarket flyers at least occasionally, and 93% reading drug store

flyers.  More than 90% are looking for low priced specials and more than 7 in 10 are comparing prices between stores.

• Once in-store, 25% rush to get the items on their list and get out, while 66% indicate that they walk all of the aisles

to be sure not to miss anything they need.

• Shopping for multiple categories is common on most trips: 62% of shoppers buy most of their food products on

dedicated shopping trips, while 48% of shoppers say the same for personal care products, and 37% for household

care products.

• A segment of shoppers agree that they often make impulse purchases: 23% in food

Shoppers are interested in new products:  68% say they are willing to pay more for a new product that is better than what is currently available.  Consumers believe that research and development really is leading to better products: 71% believe for health, 67% for household care, 61% for personal care, and 56% for food.

Leverage social media and out-of-home ads:  Shoppers indicate again that ads in TV are most successful at capturing their attention (92% always/sometimes pay attention), followed by those in out-of-home ads (87%) and magazines (85%).  Internet ads are “always or sometimes noticed” by 79% of shoppers, with online display solidifying its’ position as a cornerstone of many if not most campaigns. 

Product samples, retail flyers, TV, direct mail coupons, and magazines ads are considered the most useful ad channels for learning about new products.  Paper coupons remain popular with 70% having used direct mail coupons in the past year, 70% a newspaper coupon, and 50% used coupons from magazines.  Digital coupons are challenging print coupons with 50% having used digital coupons acquired from retailer or brand websites.

Optimize Social Networks and Peer Recommendations:  Facebook dominates the social media universe and must be the social media starting point for any brand: 76% of shoppers are on Facebook.  Twitter and LinkedIn membership have both grown significantly among principal grocery shoppers, now at 21% and 17% of shoppers.  54% of shoppers admit to paying attention to ads on social networks, and this increases to 67% of Early Adopters.   36% of Canadian shoppers are fans of a CPG brand on Facebook.

Peer recommendations are becoming even more common, both in terms of being given and being accepted. 80% agree that “If I find a product that I like, I will encourage friends and family to purchase”, while nearly 90% agree that if “I get a deal on something, I love to tell my friends and family about it.”  70% say they are likely to choose a product based on the recommendations of others.