CMOs must approach social technologies in an integration fashion
Although social technologies have been capturing marketers time for over four+ years in corporate, they’ve often been operated in a silo as experimental, or a separate deployment from traditional marketing. Yet the savvy marketing leader knows that reaching customers is increasingly becoming challenging as their touchpoints continue to fragment.
To reach the fragmented customer, marketers must apply an integrated approach. As an industry, we should dispel notions that social marketing and it’s subsequent tools should operate in a silo, but instead sit horizontally in the marketing organization as they impact so many different forms of marketing tactics, approaches, and mindsets. Furthermore, this has considerable impacts as social media organizations are founded and lead as they approach hub and spoke models to serve a variety of internal clients, as well as connect with customers in real time.
CMO Matrix: How Social Technology Must Integrate with Traditional Marketing, a Horizontal Approach
| Marketing Tactic | Why It’s Important | Opportunities of Social Technology |
| Market Research | You can’t effectively reach consumers till you know about them, and market research is a key function for any corporation. For some time, market research was limited to focus groups, consumer testing, and survey based methodology. This includes both traditional marketing research groups as well as competitive intelligence groups. | Now, with the advent of social technologies, at least three forms of opportunity have emerged: 1) Using brand monitoring technology to harvest what consumers are already saying in social channels, 2) Harnessing the crowd to find out their real time reactions, see how Communispace and Passenger have done this. 3) Using innovation tools like Salesforce Ideas, UserVoice, GetSatisfaction to build products in real time with consumers. |
| Corporate Website | The corporate website is a source of product factual information, and pro-brand materials. This is the master repository of a brand, it’s products, and services. | Social technologies are being integrated in three phases: 1) Standalone tools like communities are built, but not integrated, 2) Social login systems like FB connect and Open ID are increasing conversion rates 3) Social context is being developed so content is served up on the fly from social data. See my keynote at Gilbane’s CMS conference on social and corporate website integration. |
| Intranet | Marketing must influence internal stakeholders, including sales, field marketing, and product teams. The intranet is a key internal repository of information, this would also include any associated email communications. | Social technologies are being deployed internally like PBWorks, Socialcast, Basecamp, and Yammer without the consent of IT. The opportunity to use these tools to allow teams to find experts, information regardless of region or time are ripe. |
| Email Marketing | Email, one of the primary forms of digital communication is often a highly trusted source when customers have opt-in. When you look closely, email is a social network, see how Google wants to do it. In fact, the root information requirement for Twitter and Facebook is a verified email. | Email marketing companies are starting to offer ‘sharing’ features so recipients are encouraged to quickly share the information with their peers, as well as offering brands SMMS systems to manage this information. Expect the Facebook inbox and email marketing to quickly merge in coming years, |
| Search Marketing | A mature practice that attracts buyers and prospects during their core information seeking phase, SEM is critical to reaching the information starved through well placed sponsored information and advertisements | We’re also seeing an influx of social advertisements appear as the social graph is infused in search results. Example: We’re starting to see the content our friends recommend in search engine results, and Facebook’s foray with social ads. |
| Search Engine Optimization | Fine tuning websites so they are the first choice in organic search results is both a science and art by experienced practitioners. | Social media tools, esp blogs and ratings and review sites like Yelp score high in organic search due to many incoming links and freshly updated content. |
| Advertising | Often the bulk of most marketing budgets, advertising is key in many phases of the customer journey, in particular driving awareness and consideration. | Like SEM listed above, advertising can become more efficient in the future by tapping into social profile data (who is this person) and their social graph (who do they trust) to serve up relevant content. As Facebook spreads their features all over the web (analysis), expect a new form of advertising to appear based on social data. Twitter’s “Sponsored Links” bodes similar experimentation |
| Sponsorship | Marketers drive associative branding and qualified leads through sponsorship opportunities. | Social helps in two specific ways: New influencers have emerged such as ‘Mom and Dad bloggers” creating more niched inventory with deeper engagement to sponsor. Furthermore, all traditional sponsorship activities can use social marketing for further engagement. |
| eCommerce | While over a decade old, online shopping has continued to be primary low cost driver for the brick and mortar company. | The mainstay integration has been consumer ratings and reviews from the aggregation of the crowd, often powered by vendors like Bazzarvoice. Yet expect new forms of eCommerce to evolve as an individuals social graph is connected to eCommerce tools. See how Levi’s has done it, and attend our conference, the Rise of Social Commerce. |
| Mobile Marketing | While in it’s infancy, marketers may use these tools to connect with consumers as they are on a specific location, during a certain part of the day, with greater context. | Now, as consumers indicate their location and time while on the go, marketers may reach them using a variety of contextual information, advertisements, and harnessing what their friends have done before them in the same locations. See how Starbucks sponsored mayorship in Foursquare to increase both loyalty and WOM. |
| TV/Radio | The pioneering mediums in the electronic communication realm, these mediums provide content in a one way format. | Programs (radio hosts, newscasters, and stations) are using social technologies to infuse a two way relationship with listeners by finding new content in social channels (Watching Twitter) as well as integrating the voices of the audience, and empowering communities to build around them. Perhaps more importantly, this creates new forms of inventory for these mediums to enable brands to sponsor or get involved with. |
| From newspapers, magazines, to flyers, nothing creates an experience like holding physical paper in front of you. | Nearly all of these publications have associated social media properties, from Facebook fan pages, to supplementary blogs. In fact, if paper adoption continues to decrease, these social tools provide a low-cost method of publishing and interacting with their audiences. Magazines like Dwell have launched thriving online communities and nearly all national and many global newspapers have adopted social media in their online resources. | |
| Field, Persona, Channel, and Regional Marketing | Marketing teams are often segmented by regions, or to sit with sales units in the field, or even to target specific consumer types, like moms. This segmented marketing approach is key for deeper context in approaching unique markets. | Like in other forms, don’t expect a one-size-fits all approach, each audience type will have a different penchant for social media technologies, which we call socialgraphics. Expect a tailored approach using social technologies to emerge for each of these groups as you reach different audiences. |
Executive Recommendations: Shatter the silo and integrate social across all marketing efforts now. The above matrix demonstrates that social technologies are already being integrated in the overall mix, yet marketing leadership is at a standstill on how to integrate. Approach the space in a pragmatic method, follow these three steps:
- Start by organizing your company in a Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Centralized model. Our research shows that companies are organizing in at least five different models. Whether you have a centralized team or a hub and spoke, develop a way for an internal team to assemble (often cross-functional) to share and learn, then serve internal stakeholders. Companies must know the 43+ points to get social business ready, watch our no-cost webinar and slides to learn more.
- Cascade training and encourage sharing to reduce risk and decrease time to market. Social technologies are still new and come with high degrees of risk as brands continue to have misteps in a new form of marketing. Yet to reduce risk, empower those that have already experimented to share with others, reward those that quickly fail and get back up, and provide a constant stream of training from external partners.
- Require your marketers to integrate social technology up front –not as last minute additions. Marketers are not in the mindset of combining social technologies in existing events, campaigns, or traditional marketing. Instead of being reactive and adding this as a last minute consideration, enforce a line item in marketing plans to include social integration up front.
I look forward to your additional comments, perhaps I’ve missed some key integration touchpoints, please leave comments below.
Well-organized and well-presented, as usual. Thanks, Jeremiah. Perhaps you can add LinkedIn to the social log-ins? LinkedIn is quite significant to the B2B, targeted marketing segment.
Thanks Haroon, it took a few days to put together, but I hope it demonstrates how marketers should approach in a holistic fashion.
Great stuff Jeremiah!
I agree that social media shouldn't be locked away to do it's own thing by itself, it needs to be incorporated and used to support whatever else a company is doing. Social media is not the “cure-all” for companies, but is rather something that can help add to the curing process. In order for social media to work for a company it needs to fit in nicely and play well with all other company efforts.
Cheers,
Sheldon, community manager for Sysomos
Jeremiah – Excellent integrative approach [no surprise there].
I very much liked your last Executive Recommendation: “Require marketing plans to consider a social technology integration “not be a last minute addition”
1. It's less intimidating than the other recommendations
2. “All” it requires is the ability to think clearly,ask the right questions and plan
Thanks !
Because social media is distributed, baking it in in across marketing will require a matching new commitment to measurement.
Without social strategy, you can™t succeed with social media. Metrics provides the clarity to know if the strategy has succeeded.
Jeremiah, great blog. I like the structured approach. It's an exciting time where we marketers get to experiment and figure out how to best integrate social media in our integrated approach.
Great analysis of the opportunities available to traditional marketers with social. It echoes a lot of my own thining
Great analysis of the opportunities available to traditional marketers in the social space. In particular, your last point that social cannot be an afterthought is especially true given the number of poorly thought out executions prevalent today.
One thing I would add is that for corporate websites, there is an opportunity to integrate social technologies to invite feedback and discussion to engage users on-site instead of forcing them to go somewhere else to interact with the brand.
Mal Chia
Digital Media Strategist, University of Adelaide
Hi Jeremiah,
Excellent post. I've been writing an assignment just recently about the impact of social media on traditional marketing models and I came across this article: http://bit.ly/MpAOm
Clearly the kind of tactical changes you outline above is absolutely necessary, but for me the true challenges in social media lie in wading through all of the data they produce constantly searching for key insights, and secondly, re-structuring processes to be able to move quickly to take advantage of the kind of real time opportunities that social media today offers, never mind the advent of mobile and, in time, the Internet of Things.
In fact, the process and structural changes would be so huge, that I wonder whether the costs and upheaval might outweigh the benefits, but then, can they really afford to ignore them because its all too much trouble ?
Cheers,
Ben
I only see one comment, we're fine.
Very good point, useful. Measurement isn't clear, and is required for adopting new programs, esp when investments are being measured.
Hi Jeremiah — this is really helpful. How do you see executive communications changing as a result of social media? Beyond blogging, that is. Thanks — Mary
Jeremiah, Thank you for providing the grand overview of combining social and traditional media into an integrated marketing approach. Your horizontal approach explains how traditional media can benefit from linking with social media technology tools and channels to provide additional “boost”. Take television for example. Network news, sports events, election results, dance and entertainment shows like American Idol and Dancing With The Stars all provide social elements that connect viewers to the show’s website and Facebook and Twitter pages. Facebook TV now allows live broadcasts of events of all types. It is obviously difficult to provide more detailed how-to’s and depth to an exhaustive subject like social media, but this is a good first start. I would’ve included public relations into the mix. PR is one of the most cost-effective methods for communicating with your public and social audiences, and the media. Press releases are now digital, which facilitates adding the brand’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare link. I would also like to share some rather exhaustive links from my Blog, which is an amalgamation of articles about social networks, social media technology and social media strategy. Here’s the link: http://tommytoy.vox.com/library/posts/tags/social+media/ Tommy Toy
Great post for sure and great point. Its important to know how social media works and how you can incorporate it into the old ways of marketing.
Great stuff JO. Social media is an ingredient, not an entree. The trick is to add social to everything, not treat it like a pile of magic beans.
Hi Jeremiah — this is really helpful. What's your take on how integration is working for executive communications? Besides blogging. Thanks — Mary
Jeremiah, completely agree with you about taking an enterprise wide horizontal approach to social technologies. I would internal communications to the chart. While we often focus on the outward facing value of creating community, corporations can benefit from internal communities. Leveraging social technologies to resource and vet ideas for further exploration and development, driving cross departmental collaboration and communication with the use of social communities and so much more can improve external engagement by first improving internal engagement. In fact many companies derive greater value by beginning these internal programs before launching into the use of external social properties.
Karen
You're right! Internal communications is a core asset of marketing. The intranet would be just one manifestation of that –but not the core strategy driver thanks. Let me noodle on that.
Tommy thanks for this.
Thanks Mary
When it comes to executive communication the specific toolset isn't as important as what's being said and how receptive she is to others. Take for example John Chambers has video dialog on the intranet with his employees using vlogcasts. This is both inline with his vision, pleasant demeanor, and Cisco's quest on video. John chose this medium as speaking is his preferred mode of communication over writing (he told Charlene to us in person at a recent briefing)
I also like how Dell uses “Employee Storm” to allow employees to funnel up their ideas for executives to listen. Communication now goes both ways.
Hope those two examples help, be sure to check out Charlene's book “Open Leadership” and Bernoff's “Empowered” to learn more.
Ben, I'm not suggesting that a “Social media integration mandate” be put in place and force the new methods across the teams, it's going to happen slowly over time.
I remember butting my head against the wall when I was evangelizing social on the brand side, instead I should have used pull tactics. I was young and dumb, now I'm just older and dumb. The takeaway? Focus on being a resource for all these groups, involve them in constant learning and reward those that are doing it well.
Recommendations should be specific yet pragmatic, thanks.
Hi Jeremiah – very useful, thought-provoking framework. Beyond integration, I'm curious if you've thought about taking this analysis one point further to economic substitution. That is when the economics of using social channels dictate a shift of spending + focus from existing channels (say email or SEO) to social marketing. We did this type of analysis when I was at McKinsey in 2000 for online vs traditional ads and it was very interesting to see when/where dollars would shift.
I'm seeing some early evidence of this approach in campaigns that Offerpop clients are running. For example, showing – with real data! – that a viral coupon campaign on Twitter can provide (at a lower cost) the same response rate/# of conversions as a much larger opt-in email campaign, or that a FB ad campaign (at 1/10 the cost) performs better than a Google AdWord campaign for certain audience.
I like a horizontal approach, but I think this campaign-centric-view (perhaps tied together with a maturity model, like: http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/08/social-media-commerce/) can provide a necessary 'vertical' perspective that's equally important to driving experimentation, innovation, and hard ROI. I'd love your thoughts on taking this bottom up approach vs a top-down method, and how they may meet in the middle.
best,
Allen
Great article, even smaller businesses and firms like mine are starting to look at this differently. I'm going through the DMA Cert. Mktg. Prof. program right now and one of the key ideas is that the traditional sales funnel has been turned upside down http://www.pipmarketing.com/?p=28 (Illustrations and my blog article on it). We have been working on our own marketing plan to better integrate key social points to help the whole interact and distribute information better. I visual on what that looks like for my company can be seen here: http://www.pipmarketing.com/?p=6 As I've been studying it and rounding it out the most important element is great content creation that is relevent to the group you are targeting with a particular channel, and your great matrix really illustrates why that is so!
At this point social media is a utility and ubiquitous, and as such should be integrated into communications across the board. It's as essential as taking a marketing approach, that is to always consider the customer's point of view. Therefore, we should always be asking ourselves, how can we leverage social media in this situation? That isn't much different than thinking about how any of the tools in our arsenal can be used to reach a marketing objective.
I think demonstratesa good framework for reviewing integration. However, it doesn't look at the details enough within each discipline. Advertising at present is extremely research intensive with many and multiple insights being used both offline and online including social. The cost benefit, reach and response rates are important as well when integrating marketing nor is the deployment and timing considered. This is a good start point for many but in the industry we are already into the detail.
Even though looks spammy, email marketing is one of the best way to increase traffic and sales, plus those other technique.