The Social Faux Pas: How smartly do you escape paid content on Web?

Social Media users are much smarter now. They can differentiate between promoted and non-promoted content. They do read your campaign content, but only when they need it or see any personal satisfaction. They might see ONLY one or NONE of the 1,000s of promotions running on the Web on various Social Media channels. But, can that ad promo be yours, it is indeed a difficult situation to be in. What to do then? Do write in, or leave a comment, and let others know how smartly you position and present your ads on Web to get maximum response.

Learn from others' mistakes: Become a Social Media Expert

They say, life is too short to make mistakes. So learn from others’.

Since Social Media Marketing is new and yielding results for some, all B2C and B2B marketers want to try it out. To get it right at the first shot, marketers must focus on messaging. Messing up with content and messaging may cost you a lot. You might face a ban on your campaign.

Most recently, BSkyB succeeded in getting a Virgin Media direct mail campaign banned for tricking consumers into thinking it was an official offer of a TV upgrade from its pay-TV rival – but lost a bid to stop Virgin being able to claim it offered a "better TV experience". The satellite broadcaster lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority over a campaign from Virgin Media that arrived in an official-looking jiffy bag promising a "satellite TV upgrade pack" to households.

Messaging is the key everywhere, especially in the B2B marketing world. Here are some examples that may sound familier to you:

1) When you get a poor open rate / response to your e-mail campaign, there is a big chance that it is because of the drab subject line, which you forgot to focus on. Though poor open rate is not just restricted to catchy subject line.

2) When you witness a challenge in building audiences for webinar, it could be majorly because of the HTML invitations that you sent out without a clear & catcy message.

3) When you get poor form fills through whitepaper hosted on a Website, for example, it could be because of the wrong / misleading / boring banner text copy that could have been better with a little more attention.

and so on.

Digital marketing campaigns revolve around content. Right messaging, correct keywords, good presentation among others can actually create business opportunities too, if managed well.

Tip of the day: If you are running a digital campaign, keep some money aside to run a follow-up campaign. It gives results. This is valid for both traditional as well as Next Gen Social Marketers.  

The New ROI Factory: Meet the PPC Outsourcers

What are the key sources of measuring the success of any digital marketing campaign? Is there any business opportunity that has been opened up because of any online marketing programs? If you are a B2B marketer, you would know how difficult it is to answer such questions. For such marketer, here are some useful insights.

Using Social Media for lead generation has been proven effective despite its slow adoption among B2B marketers, according to a recently published research report titled 2011 State of Digital Marketing conducted by Webmarketing123, a digital marketing agency that helps clients convert online visibility into measurable results.

The research report is based on the responses to the digital survey conducted online between August and September 2011. Over 500 U.S. participants completed the survey – all individuals who responded to an email invitation sent to a registered list of marketing professionals.  It reveals that 68.4% of marketers surveyed say, they have generated leads from Social Media sites, with over 55% of them having closed deals from Social Media leads. Because of this success, 60% of respondents plan to increase Social Media marketing budget in 2012, compared to 53.1% for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and 40.2% for Pay Per Click (PPC).

Not surprisingly, more companies outsource PPC than SEO, and a whopping 84.8% keep Social Media Marketing in-house. And speaking of Social Media, Facebook is the leading Social network by far, with Twitter slightly surpassing LinkedIn. According to the research 75.3% of B2C companies are the most active on Facebook, followed by 8.4% on Twitter and 6.2% on LinkedIn whereas B2B companies are active more evenly across all three leading networks: 34.6% Facebook, 25.6% Twitter, and 25.3% LinkedIn. Moreover, 46.4% B2B marketers who responded to the survey said that generating leads is the most important objective of their digital marketing programs whereas 39.9% B2C marketers give importance to generating sales. Website traffic is the key source of measuring the success of digital marketing programs.

The Re-incarnated CMOs = The Social CMOs

Traditionally, enterprises and individuals used to seek peers’ advice to make buying decisions. It’s changing fast. They explore the solution or product providers’ Websites first and understand their service capabilities by participating in online communities to make buying decisions. Buyers are no longer skeptical of solution providers who now understand the importance of the depth and quality of thought leadership and accordingly host content on their Websites and online communities. Websites represent enterprises. And, thus Website development and maintenance is the marketers’ first preferred functional activity. These are considered as the number 1 source of information, especially during the early stages of the buying process.

Social enterprises expect the already confused and tired-of-not-being-able-to-measure-the-performance CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) to try Social and drive business. If you look at the marketing functions and the key marketing strategies, Social Media is one of the key marketing programs. Everyone wants to get into that. The dilemma is that traditional marketers don't know how to do this whereas the ones who know hardly understand the purpose of running it as a marketing function. Experts say that in future, Social Media expertise will be the key requirement for all the marketers. Is this really true? What about brand managers? In the era of Social, every employee would be the brand ambassador and every employee on Social Media would be the brand manager. The companies will have to be very transparent as well as alert to sense negative noise.

Today, the world’s fastest growing companies are on the rise without any promotions, especially true in the case of recently established Social businesses. For example, Facebook’s user base turned 1 billion members without any promotions. It was all through the word of mouth on the Web. The Social networking site never used the traditional marketing tools, such as advertisements. Does this mean we don’t need to invest in marketing? Not necessarily.

Having said that the challenge comes in when you know that you need to invest in marketing but you don’t know in what, when and why. If you go by the latest trend in the market, you would try every bit of paid Social promotions as part of your overall marketing strategies. And, the Social CMOs would need establish "The New ROI Factory".   

Social Geeks Vs. Traditional Marketers!

Six years ago when I was just a fresher in the world of journalism, I was also the user of not-so-popular-then Linkedin and Facebook both. I was an active user of the former and a passive one of the latter—just curious to know what it was all about. I was using all these Social platforms just to sound cool amongst my colleagues and look better of them all. After couple of years, we learned to ‘scrap’,--yes, I am talking about Orkut, Google’s first Social networking site very popular amongst Asians and Latin Americans. Of course, it was my favorite too. We all were using it without a hint that the fundamentals of getting socialized were changing. And, the change was radical.

Today, I am a B2B marketer with an Indian multinational firm, registering the industry’s fastest growth. Being a new media marketer, I understand the importance of running effective Social Media campaigns, maintaining online communities, listening to the voices on Social platforms, tracking every action of my Social Media team, measuring the impact and calculating the ROI. I am not great at it but I do it better than most of us can do as I am the firm believer in Social and have grown with it in my professional life. The challenge for people like me is the pace at which Social is changing; it’s superfast!

Social is certainly challenging the way the corporate world operates today. Marketers are worried as the future enterprises will be driven by Social geeks who will be contributing to the business growth in a dramatic way. If marketers are not Social yet, I wonder what they will be doing in the future. Does that mean Social geeks have better chances to secure a job in the marketing field?

This thought actually inspired me to pen it all down quickly and tweak the focus of this blog a bit—from just focusing on the modern world to highlighting the future of Social and its impact on the corporate world and the active Internet Socialites. Alike every second author, I kept on changing the angle of this blog frequently and with every attempt most of it got renewed and became better. But, “At times you need to just stop and say, that’s it,” advised Jeff Ashcroft, Vice President & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. I am glad I met Jeff and discussed about it.

Socially Inspired!

Food for thought for all futurists who have a passion to drive change and want to pursue personal as well as professional growth through social media.

I was stunned when I heard a unique Social trading cards bridge Meet-Meme Director Jonathan Brewer saying, “I started my first company when I was 17.” How often you hear that in India, I thought. We don’t start up our own firms when we are just teens. Jonathan is 31 now and has already founded 3 firms till date. His newest company is the result of his social inspiration!  

 For those who don’t know, at 17 we (people in India) are expected to prepare for entrance exams to get through IIMs, IIMCs or such. Our educational background should be strong enough to help us land in an Indian or a global multinational firm, which is capable of offering us an onsite opportunity after a couple of years of hard work—that only Japanese or Chinese can surpass. Even then, we switch jobs as Yankees, and replace our iPhones with its most updated versions. In the modern Indian culture, we don’t intend to stick to an employer for more than 3 years. Our next overseas jobs could be offered by our employer’s biggest threat or competition. We don’t mind taking that up.

Social doesn’t inspire us to become entrepreneurs yet. For us, it’s just an entertainment platform, a stress buster, and a job finder [Linkedin is good!]. We will probably get into it completely if one can prove us that Social can help us earn brownie points during our appraisals.

Having said that, the future of Social for Indians will be around what we see in the western world today. We are Social. Do stuff online. But if you ask us to buy gifts for friends on Facebook, as Jonathan did for one of his friends, we won’t do that. Give us few more years, we will be there!

Social amazes me every day. From cultural to individualistic behavior, the impact of Social can be sensed everywhere. For example, it’s easy to notice the Facebook effect on our day to day life. We have stopped ringing our friends at 12 am on their birthdays; we see the birthday notifications on our Facebook page and immediately post something on our friends’ walls to wish them birthdays. On the other hand, we wish almost everyone who is part of our mini Social world on Facebook. We never used to do that before; I don’t remember wishing my friend’s ex boyfriend! Anyhow, I wonder what will happen when the Facebook addicts take the charge of the future corporate world.

My First Meme Trading Card.

Thanks Jonathan!