Social Technology Impacts Every Customer Touchpoint

Forbes CMO Network, An Insightful Resource For Marketing Leaders
I’m serving CMOs by teaming up with the Forbes as a regular contributor. My goal? To guide marketing leadership on how to leverage disruptive technologies and meet business goals.   At a more detailed level, this blog will continue to aim at providing nitty-gritty breakdowns, frameworks, and insights.  Use these two resources in tandem to both develop strategies, and then implement best practices across the organization.

[Companies Must Develop A Holistic Strategy, As Social Technologies Impact Every Customer Touchpoint]


Social Technologies are a Horizontal –Not A Vertical Approach
It continues to amaze the market that such simple social technologies can impact the entire organization.  In fact, social technologies, at the core, allow people to connect to each other without a middle person in the way.  As a result, expect social technologies to impact every employee and customer touchpoint.   CMOs must prepare in their 2010 planning how to leverage social, not as a skunkworks but as a strategic shift in all communications.

Three Resources to Use:

  1. Use the Forbes CMO article as a guide for your marketing leadership, pass along this article “CMOs: Consumers Are Connected. You Need To Be, Too”.
  2. Below, use the detailed matrix (and the links within them) for the strategists who need to plan out the actual programs.
  3. Leave a comment with other suggestions, and benefit from working with the very savvy Web Strategy community, who I learn from every single day (thank you).

Web Strategy Matrix:  Social Technologies Impact Every Customer Touchpoint

Medium Description and Examples Market Maturity Impacts To Brands
Digital Advertising Facebook launched “Social Ads” that allow advertisements to appear based on your profile information and friends. Infantile As profiles become portable (like Facebook or Google connect) people can share their personal info for contextual experiences, expect advertising to improve CTRs as social data is added.  See how an interactive ad benefitted from my Facebook data.
Search Marketing (Paid and SEO) For years, bloggers heavy linking and frequent content have scored high on SERP pages. Recently, Google and Microsoft partnered with Twitter, to offer “Social Search” which means users could received customized SERP based on their friends behaviors and preferences. Pre-Teen Social search will impact a prospects search results are impacted by their friends, this complicates the traditional search marketing strategy of simple keyword placement. Conversational marketing becomes a key factor in search strategy. Learn more about Social Search.
Email Marketing Many email vendors like Responsys, ExactTarget, Constant Contact and Zeta Interactive provide simple ways to “share this” email with their friends on social networks. More advanced vendors are offering advanced monitoring, and innovative companies like Flowtown are using email addresses to identify a prospects social networks Infantile Email marketers can no longer be in broadcast mode, but must be prepared for emails to be shared with each other. Furthermore, they should seek how to influence content on the newsfeed in social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.  Learn how email and social networks are interlaced.
Web Campaigns/Microsites Traditional microsites now have social components from simple “Share this” features to viral videos and community dialog. On the extreme side, Skittles allowed the whole site to be taken over by consumers. Adult A marketing campaign today without social elements is asking to be ignored. To benefit from word of mouth, marketers know spurring a conversation will cause the campaign to spread.
Corporate Site Corporate sites are integrating social features, From Community Platforms like Mzinga, Awareness, Pluck, Kickapps, Liveworld (client) they encourage customers to talk back. Young Adult Even if companies don’t want their website to be social, they can’t stop it. Google’s “SideWiki” product allows any webpage to be social using a browser plugin.
Mobile, Location Based Location based social networks are quickly emerging among early adopters. Foursquare, Gowalla, and even Twitter are allowing people to share their location, time, and social context. Infantile Advertising and special offers becomes more targeted as brands can triangulate contextual information for consumers –but only if they desire to see it.
Sales Efforts Ok, this isn’t a medium, nor the two listed below, but it impacts the scope of the CMO. Most marketers provide sales enablement resources, now these sales folks are armed with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. In fact, many sales folks have had their digital rolodex in LinkedIn for years. Young Adult For savvy marketers, providing social marketing skill training to sales folks will provide them with best practices, and teach them to do more quicker. Those that do nothing run the risk of PR nightmares and even legal problems for the untrained department. Learn about social media policies.
Support Efforts What happens in customer support now echos on the social web, from Dooce’s flare up with Maytag to Domino’s Employees snotting on Youtube.  Furthermore, customers self-support each other in forums, Facebook, and GetSatisfaction. Adult Marketers must provide a holistic experience to customers, as they don’t care what department you’re in.  Read more about Social Support.
Product Development A handful of savvy companies like Dell, Starbucks, and Nokia are using social tools to improve the innovation process using tools from Salesforce ideas, Uservoice, or Getsatisfaction Infantile Customers want to innovate with brand, use these free resources to improve brand messaging, test new features, and to develop an army of advocates.  Learn how some companies have benefitted from co-innovation.
Real World and Events Physical events are now impacted by social technologies, and even virtual events.  Attendees will connect to each other, comment about the event, and discuss if even after the event has concluded. Adult Event marketers must develop a strategy to encompass both pre, during, and post event to be successful.  Here’s a playbook to integrate social and events.

Sharing This Content
Occasionally, I get a few emails from people asking if they can use my blog posts in their presentations. Here’s my policy: You cannot package up this content and sell it without my permission. However, it is ok to use for educational purposes as long as you give me credit on the slide, mention it verbally, and link to my blog. Creative Commons defines this as: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Love to hear your comments below, and how social impacts all digital channels.

Thanks to Christine Tran, Altimeter Researcher for her editorial expertise on the Forbes piece.

51 Replies to “Social Technology Impacts Every Customer Touchpoint”

  1. Thanks for mentioning Zeta Interactive, Jeremiah. We're hard at work baking even more social functionality into our email offering because it's clear that there is a lot of opportunity for innovation here.

  2. Thanks for mentioning Zeta Interactive, Jeremiah. We're hard at work baking even more social functionality into our email offering because it's clear that there is a lot of opportunity for innovation here.

  3. Thanks for mentioning Zeta Interactive, Jeremiah. We're hard at work baking even more social functionality into our email offering because it's clear that there is a lot of opportunity for innovation here.

  4. Jeremiah, Excellent post, you haven't mentioned about social applications in this post.

  5. Jeremiah, Excellent post, you haven't mentioned about social applications in this post.

  6. Jeremiah, Excellent post, you haven't mentioned about social applications in this post.

  7. Digital Advertising – Universally ignored, in fact programs specifically made to route around, ROI not there.
    Search Marketing – More ineffective with time. Click fraud city. Shotgun serious.
    Email Marketing – Half dead. Even the “newsletter” methods are weak.
    Web Campaigns/Microsites – People are jaded now. Microsite/Viral marketing impacts muted.
    Corporate Site – Commodity. A mere requirement.
    Mobile, Location – Intrusive, annoying, yet grabbing only impulse buyers.
    Support Efforts – Offloaded, Off-shored. Third Party is the trend.
    Product Development – Negligible impact, and you need to design to where the market WILL BE, not where it is now.
    Events – Again, jaded. Works first few times, thundering drop-offs after…

    Adding a 'social' element to all of these, still isn't going to even microscopically touch the fundamental problems at the core.

  8. Digital Advertising – Universally ignored, in fact programs specifically made to route around, ROI not there.
    Search Marketing – More ineffective with time. Click fraud city. Shotgun serious.
    Email Marketing – Half dead. Even the “newsletter” methods are weak.
    Web Campaigns/Microsites – People are jaded now. Microsite/Viral marketing impacts muted.
    Corporate Site – Commodity. A mere requirement.
    Mobile, Location – Intrusive, annoying, yet grabbing only impulse buyers.
    Support Efforts – Offloaded, Off-shored. Third Party is the trend.
    Product Development – Negligible impact, and you need to design to where the market WILL BE, not where it is now.
    Events – Again, jaded. Works first few times, thundering drop-offs after…

    Adding a 'social' element to all of these, still isn't going to even microscopically touch the fundamental problems at the core.

  9. Digital Advertising – Universally ignored, in fact programs specifically made to route around, ROI not there.
    Search Marketing – More ineffective with time. Click fraud city. Shotgun serious.
    Email Marketing – Half dead. Even the “newsletter” methods are weak.
    Web Campaigns/Microsites – People are jaded now. Microsite/Viral marketing impacts muted.
    Corporate Site – Commodity. A mere requirement.
    Mobile, Location – Intrusive, annoying, yet grabbing only impulse buyers.
    Support Efforts – Offloaded, Off-shored. Third Party is the trend.
    Product Development – Negligible impact, and you need to design to where the market WILL BE, not where it is now.
    Events – Again, jaded. Works first few times, thundering drop-offs after…

    Adding a 'social' element to all of these, still isn't going to even microscopically touch the fundamental problems at the core.

  10. Digital Advertising – Universally ignored, in fact programs specifically made to route around, ROI not there.
    Search Marketing – More ineffective with time. Click fraud city. Shotgun serious.
    Email Marketing – Half dead. Even the “newsletter” methods are weak.
    Web Campaigns/Microsites – People are jaded now. Microsite/Viral marketing impacts muted.
    Corporate Site – Commodity. A mere requirement.
    Mobile, Location – Intrusive, annoying, yet grabbing only impulse buyers.
    Support Efforts – Offloaded, Off-shored. Third Party is the trend.
    Product Development – Negligible impact, and you need to design to where the market WILL BE, not where it is now.
    Events – Again, jaded. Works first few times, thundering drop-offs after…

    Adding a 'social' element to all of these, still isn't going to even microscopically touch the fundamental problems at the core.

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