For your CEO and CFO to take social media campaigns seriously, you need to be able to demonstrate a direct measurable impact that either reduces costs (say in reduced customer service heads) or increases sales. At the moment, most social campaigns are doing neither.

Both Dell and Sony have both stated that they have generated real sales from social media program, but these are definitely exceptions.

But the majority of marketers don’t even measure ROI at a simple level let alone try and attribute sales. It’s not that there aren’t any tools to do so, or that there isn’t a formula for calculating ROI; it’s just that links to actual sales from social media programs are often tenuous. And where you have tenuous links, then ROI becomes very subjective and only as good as the assumptions that go into the formula. In my experience, CFOs don’t like subjective!

There are lots of tools becoming available to help you measure sentiment, comments and click through, but all of these are essentially measuring influence, not measuring what really counts. So perhaps the bigger question should be, “How do we turn fans into paying customers?”

Social media marketing is still a long way from reliably generating revenue. Generally these programs most often start with a ‘Broadcast’ stage where the approach is to use blogs and social pages to recruit fans and push a corporate message. The goal here is most often to build large follower bases and communicate with customers and prospects, and educate them about your products and services.

Some sites are delivering service as customers seek to get specific answers, to connect with the brand and get service, or just be heard and share their thoughts and experiences. Many brands struggle to deal with this stream, especially in the B2C space where the stream can potentially become an overwhelming torrent.

More often than not this demands dedicated headcount, and your CFO may well be asking where the savings or increased sales are.

This is where many brands are now: Their social media marketing has established a good fan following, but it’s costing more than they expected to service the requests and moderate the community. There are few attributable sales that can be put against all this effort.

Linking Ecommerce and Social Media

To convert fans into paying customers though requires more. In fact, it needs integration between ecommerce sites and social media sites so that the data can be linked and fans identified while on the ecommerce site. While your sites are disconnected, all your fans are anonymous; you have no idea whether they are a fan or not, so you can’t market to them in a relevant way. This type of integration is deeper than the commonly seen ‘Friend us on Facebook’ or ‘Follow us on Twitter’ hyperlinks which you see on many ecommerce sites.

What’s needed is to allow customers to log in to their social network accounts on your ecommerce site. Over time this will become commonplace and will surpass many registration processes. When this happens, you can then associate browsing behavior, purchases and abandoned shopping carts with the individual fan.

You May Ask ‘Why Would a Fan Sign in on my Site?’

The answer is simple. The number one reason why consumers friend a brand on a social network is to receive special offers and promotions. So by putting up a simple logo offering promotions via social networks, you’re giving customers a reason to share with you.

Once they are identified, then a whole spectrum of online marketing campaigns become possible for the first time. For example, you might choose to follow up abandoned shopping carts using their social network. Or you might want to run member-get-member promotions to encourage your customers to encourage their friends to buy. This is where the CEO and CFO will start getting interested: Now your campaigns can directly drive sales.

For your CEO and CFO to take social media campaigns seriously, you need to be able to demonstrate a direct measurable impact that either reduces costs (say in reduced customer service heads) or increases sales. At the moment, most social campaigns are doing neither.

Both Dell and Sony have both stated that they have generated real sales from social media program, but these are definitely exceptions.

But the majority of marketers don’t even measure ROI at a simple level let alone try and attribute sales. It’s not that there aren’t any tools to do so, or that there isn’t a formula for calculating ROI; it’s just that links to actual sales from social media programs are often tenuous. And where you have tenuous links, then ROI becomes very subjective and only as good as the assumptions that go into the formula. In my experience, CFOs don’t like subjective!

There are lots of tools becoming available to help you measure sentiment, comments and click through, but all of these are essentially measuring influence, not measuring what really counts. So perhaps the bigger question should be, “How do we turn fans into paying customers?”

Social media marketing is still a long way from reliably generating revenue. Generally these programs most often start with a ‘Broadcast’ stage where the approach is to use blogs and social pages to recruit fans and push a corporate message. The goal here is most often to build large follower bases and communicate with customers and prospects, and educate them about your products and services.

Some sites are delivering service as customers seek to get specific answers, to connect with the brand and get service, or just be heard and share their thoughts and experiences. Many brands struggle to deal with this stream, especially in the B2C space where the stream can potentially become an overwhelming torrent.

More often than not this demands dedicated headcount, and your CFO may well be asking where the savings or increased sales are.

This is where many brands are now: Their social media marketing has established a good fan following, but it’s costing more than they expected to service the requests and moderate the community. There are few attributable sales that can be put against all this effort.

Linking Ecommerce and Social Media

To convert fans into paying customers though requires more. In fact, it needs integration between ecommerce sites and social media sites so that the data can be linked and fans identified while on the ecommerce site. While your sites are disconnected, all your fans are anonymous; you have no idea whether they are a fan or not, so you can’t market to them in a relevant way. This type of integration is deeper than the commonly seen ‘Friend us on Facebook’ or ‘Follow us on Twitter’ hyperlinks which you see on many ecommerce sites.

What’s needed is to allow customers to log in to their social network accounts on your ecommerce site. Over time this will become commonplace and will surpass many registration processes. When this happens, you can then associate browsing behavior, purchases and abandoned shopping carts with the individual fan.

You May Ask ‘Why Would a Fan Sign in on my Site?’

The answer is simple. The number one reason why consumers friend a brand on a social network is to receive special offers and promotions. So by putting up a simple logo offering promotions via social networks, you’re giving customers a reason to share with you.

Once they are identified, then a whole spectrum of online marketing campaigns become possible for the first time. For example, you might choose to follow up abandoned shopping carts using their social network. Or you might want to run member-get-member promotions to encourage your customers to encourage their friends to buy. This is where the CEO and CFO will start getting interested: Now your campaigns can directly drive sales.

For your CEO and CFO to take social media campaigns seriously, you need to be able to demonstrate a direct measurable impact that either reduces costs (say in reduced customer service heads) or increases sales. At the moment, most social campaigns are doing neither.

Both Dell and Sony have both stated that they have generated real sales from social media program, but these are definitely exceptions.

But the majority of marketers don’t even measure ROI at a simple level let alone try and attribute sales. It’s not that there aren’t any tools to do so, or that there isn’t a formula for calculating ROI; it’s just that links to actual sales from social media programs are often tenuous. And where you have tenuous links, then ROI becomes very subjective and only as good as the assumptions that go into the formula. In my experience, CFOs don’t like subjective!

There are lots of tools becoming available to help you measure sentiment, comments and click through, but all of these are essentially measuring influence, not measuring what really counts. So perhaps the bigger question should be, “How do we turn fans into paying customers?”

Social media marketing is still a long way from reliably generating revenue. Generally these programs most often start with a ‘Broadcast’ stage where the approach is to use blogs and social pages to recruit fans and push a corporate message. The goal here is most often to build large follower bases and communicate with customers and prospects, and educate them about your products and services.

Some sites are delivering service as customers seek to get specific answers, to connect with the brand and get service, or just be heard and share their thoughts and experiences. Many brands struggle to deal with this stream, especially in the B2C space where the stream can potentially become an overwhelming torrent.

More often than not this demands dedicated headcount, and your CFO may well be asking where the savings or increased sales are.

This is where many brands are now: Their social media marketing has established a good fan following, but it’s costing more than they expected to service the requests and moderate the community. There are few attributable sales that can be put against all this effort.

Linking Ecommerce and Social Media

To convert fans into paying customers though requires more. In fact, it needs integration between ecommerce sites and social media sites so that the data can be linked and fans identified while on the ecommerce site. While your sites are disconnected, all your fans are anonymous; you have no idea whether they are a fan or not, so you can’t market to them in a relevant way. This type of integration is deeper than the commonly seen ‘Friend us on Facebook’ or ‘Follow us on Twitter’ hyperlinks which you see on many ecommerce sites.

What’s needed is to allow customers to log in to their social network accounts on your ecommerce site. Over time this will become commonplace and will surpass many registration processes. When this happens, you can then associate browsing behavior, purchases and abandoned shopping carts with the individual fan.

You May Ask ‘Why Would a Fan Sign in on my Site?’

The answer is simple. The number one reason why consumers friend a brand on a social network is to receive special offers and promotions. So by putting up a simple logo offering promotions via social networks, you’re giving customers a reason to share with you.

Once they are identified, then a whole spectrum of online marketing campaigns become possible for the first time. For example, you might choose to follow up abandoned shopping carts using their social network. Or you might want to run member-get-member promotions to encourage your customers to encourage their friends to buy. This is where the CEO and CFO will start getting interested: Now your campaigns can directly drive sales.

For your CEO and CFO to take social media campaigns seriously, you need to be able to demonstrate a direct measurable impact that either reduces costs (say in reduced customer service heads) or increases sales. At the moment, most social campaigns are doing neither.

Both Dell and Sony have both stated that they have generated real sales from social media program, but these are definitely exceptions.

But the majority of marketers don’t even measure ROI at a simple level let alone try and attribute sales. It’s not that there aren’t any tools to do so, or that there isn’t a formula for calculating ROI; it’s just that links to actual sales from social media programs are often tenuous. And where you have tenuous links, then ROI becomes very subjective and only as good as the assumptions that go into the formula. In my experience, CFOs don’t like subjective!

There are lots of tools becoming available to help you measure sentiment, comments and click through, but all of these are essentially measuring influence, not measuring what really counts. So perhaps the bigger question should be, “How do we turn fans into paying customers?”

Social media marketing is still a long way from reliably generating revenue. Generally these programs most often start with a ‘Broadcast’ stage where the approach is to use blogs and social pages to recruit fans and push a corporate message. The goal here is most often to build large follower bases and communicate with customers and prospects, and educate them about your products and services.

Some sites are delivering service as customers seek to get specific answers, to connect with the brand and get service, or just be heard and share their thoughts and experiences. Many brands struggle to deal with this stream, especially in the B2C space where the stream can potentially become an overwhelming torrent.

More often than not this demands dedicated headcount, and your CFO may well be asking where the savings or increased sales are.

This is where many brands are now: Their social media marketing has established a good fan following, but it’s costing more than they expected to service the requests and moderate the community. There are few attributable sales that can be put against all this effort.

Linking Ecommerce and Social Media

To convert fans into paying customers though requires more. In fact, it needs integration between ecommerce sites and social media sites so that the data can be linked and fans identified while on the ecommerce site. While your sites are disconnected, all your fans are anonymous; you have no idea whether they are a fan or not, so you can’t market to them in a relevant way. This type of integration is deeper than the commonly seen ‘Friend us on Facebook’ or ‘Follow us on Twitter’ hyperlinks which you see on many ecommerce sites.

What’s needed is to allow customers to log in to their social network accounts on your ecommerce site. Over time this will become commonplace and will surpass many registration processes. When this happens, you can then associate browsing behavior, purchases and abandoned shopping carts with the individual fan.

You May Ask ‘Why Would a Fan Sign in on my Site?’

The answer is simple. The number one reason why consumers friend a brand on a social network is to receive special offers and promotions. So by putting up a simple logo offering promotions via social networks, you’re giving customers a reason to share with you.

Once they are identified, then a whole spectrum of online marketing campaigns become possible for the first time. For example, you might choose to follow up abandoned shopping carts using their social network. Or you might want to run member-get-member promotions to encourage your customers to encourage their friends to buy. This is where the CEO and CFO will start getting interested: Now your campaigns can directly drive sales.

Let me explain…

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, average modern retailers have about a 5% margin on products, be they a pair of sneakers or a flat-screen television. The same story explains that typical Black Friday discounts are now 40-50%.

I understand the logic, that one or two extraordinary deals will bring people into the store and they’ll also buy non-discounted or lesser discounted products, thereby making up the difference in profit. But what if that no longer holds true?

Read the papers, you’ll see that across the United States people who went shopping at all on Black Friday were very careful about their purchases and were much more likely to go into a store and buy the one or two super-specials than a basketful of goods.

The result? Instead of getting a nice boost on profits and a good jump-start on Christmas / holiday shopping, the entire experience was more likely a complete bust for retailers, losing them, rather than earning them money.

While some analysts will doubtless peg this to the 2008 recession, I suggest instead that it’s the inevitable result of the increasing commoditization of our world, the reduction of everything to its cheapest possible manifestation.

This is what Linda Sanford and I wrote about in our book Let Go To Grow [aff], and it’s fascinating to see how it’s become a more visible retail phenomenon in the years since we wrapped up the manuscript.

Every time we shop at Wal-Mart or Target to get our product a buck or two cheaper, every time we pop online to save on sales tax, every time we research products to identify the lowest-cost outlet, we’re all contributing to the problem.

With a retail economy built on the need for a substantial profit to cover overhead and costs, pay city and county taxes, health care for employees, and offset theft and so on, this trend towards an ever-more-commoditized world is a scary one. If followed to its logical extreme, we won’t have any retail stores at all or we’ll have to impose online store tariffs that offset the dramatically lower overhead of online drop-ship companies. What choice will we have?

Meanwhile, we’ll have to see. I predict that retailers will report that gross revenue from Black Friday sales were okay, but that profit from these sales was down significantly from prior years. And next year, even if the economy is in better shape, won’t jump back.

Comments

Seriously, when did this happen??? I mean, I knew Apple was doing well, but I’d taken the time to compare their financials versus Microsoft. Wow. Nice work Team Apple!

Next, via Matt Asay, Gizmodo is reporting that the new MacBooks will prevent Jailbroken iPhone and iPod devices. It seems that the culprit is a new build of iTunes for the new MacBooks. Things work fine on a Windows machine. A gizmodo commenter writes:

“While I don’t like it, I can see why Apple tries to prevent Jailbreaking and Unlocking. Unlocking hurts them in the pocket and they are in the business of making money, after all. Jailbreaking opens up the possibility of piracy of App Store apps, this is just their way of trying to prevent piracy. It’s no different from firmware updates for game consoles that break previous hacking techniques.”

It always surprises me how Apple and Microsoft can make the exact same move and Microsoft will attract criticism, while Apple will attract praise. Part of this is because Apple’s products really are sexy and fun to use. Sure. But the response is also driven by folks pulling for “the little guy”.  However, in the Apple vs. Microsoft fight, two things have changed. First, Apple isn’t in the same fight that Microsoft thinks it is in. Apple is more like Sony than it is like Microsoft. Yet, Microsoft competes with Apple like Apple is, well, your dad’s Apple. Second, while many of us were looking elsewhere, Apple isn’t “the little guy” anymore.

Comments