237 individuals come together for a noble cause

Early this year, 237 bloggers from the marketing, research and associated streams, from 15 countries across the world decided to partcipate in a collaborative venture called the 'Age of Conversation 2' to raise money for Variety, the children's charity. All proceeds from sales of the book, available in hardcover and softcover editions, as well as a downloadable e-book, will be donated to Variety, the international children’s charity.

My chapter in AOC 2 on "Interactivity in the digital age" talks about improving the interactivity of an online marketing communication tool for better brand communication. The thoughts included in the chapter are based on my research paper: "Improving Corporate Blog Interactivity for increased brand communication" which can be downloaded from the research library at Customerthink-the global thought leader in customer-centric business strategy.

The primary thought behind the book-

The marketing industry is abuzz about how citizen marketers are changing the landscape, and these books capture that new phenomenon from a uniquely global vantage point.

The Age of Conversation 2 is available as a downloadable e-book, at a cost of $12 and a limited number of printed books in hardcover for $29.95, and softcover for$19.95.

Purchases can be made online at lulu.com. More information can be seen online at the Age of Conversation.

Social CRM-Finally......

Finally!!!

Recognition for Web 2.0 as a tool for CRM!!!

Courtesy: Oracle

An Oracle Appcast with Oracle V.P, CRM Solutions

While summarising the state of CRM industry, Anthony Lye, Vice Prseident, CRM Solutions-Oracle talks about changes in the CRM Technology in the last 3 years, where he highlights the emergence of Web 2.0 as a tool for CRM.

Relevant points-

1.Emergence of web 2.0 and its ability to extract innovation by enabling people to participate, socialise and collaborate has generated huge opportunities.

2.Web 2.0, by ushering in an era of collaboration and social partiicpation, has, for the first time in the history of computing, brought about the fact that technology on the internet leads technology on the intranet.

Key points relevant to Corporate Blogging here-

A Corporate Blog-a Web 2.0 outcome, is an excellent tool in an integrated organisational context, for the dimensions of-
a)Interactive Marketing
as an instrument in the value chain, specifically in terms of communication of value to the customer.
b)Branding
as in ability to create a brand image by influencing consumer perceptions and hence diverting greater traffic to websites.
c)The Customer Relationship
as in a vital tool for consumer engagement.

As per my suppositions in this field an year back,
i)Customer Acquisition and Customer Retention were the twin CRM objectives for any organisation(Shainesh)
ii)Customer Acquisition was a result of collective organisational efforts directed towards marketing and branding.
iii)Retention was a result of the organisational ability to drive brand loyalty through directing efforts towards customer engagement and satisfaction.

Just when the entire contribution of Web 2.0 to the entire fabric of marketing, branding and customer relationship was on the verge of going down in history under the segment of 'Interactive Marketing' alone, merely for want of acceptance from a reputed name in the field of CRM, the announcement by Oracle has been timely!!!

With Gartner recognising Corporate Blogging and Oracle pitching in for Web 2.0, the evolution process of Social CRM, over the next couple of years, will be interesting to watch.

Branding and Marketing in the Web 2.0 world

The application of the participatory nature of Web 2.0 and the ability of viral proliferation is being leveraged by the Marketing function.

Peter Kim's list of 162 brands using social media for marketing

As organizations struggle with market coverage and penetration strategies, Web 2.0 offers numerous tools to aid the organizational endeavour to reach the consumer.
With a distinct price advantage, and the ability to build a brand online, building brand identity, meaning and forging brand relationships seem to be the order of the day.

A Corporate blog is a perfect tool for connecting a well defined brand strategy to online presence enhancement. Provision of the capacity for monitoring consumer responses to a brand through the user comments,will soon bring corporate blogging into mainstream adoption.

Corporate Blogging Series II: Blogging and the Brand

Perusing through several corporate blogs to understand the objectives behind their existence, customer aquisition and retention appear important thoughts behind the strategic management decision to host the same.

To promote Customer Acquisition by building brand equity by
a)Showcasing organisational growth
b)Clarifying organisational vision, opinion and direction for consumers,
c)Image Building and
d)Brand Building

Acquisition is a vital stage and a focused and contextual interaction with the customers is beneficial to any organization for furthering it's brand. A corporate blog helps create a forum for open and integrated channels of communication between brand and consumer by enabling interactivity between brand and consumer.

Blogging is fast becoming an extremely important strategy for any online marketer.Research shows that organisations after having commenced blogging have climbed up the Alexa traffic rankings. As news articles about a relevant industry, product updates, interviews, insights into topics of importance to the target audience emerge on the blog, they create a subscriber base, the way people subscribe to the daily newspaper. This way regular updates on products, features etc. can reach the niche consumer base at a fast speed. Good quality relevant content, constant updation and creation of a blog environment where ideas flourish and debates on related topics keep people from the target market coming back is what works for these organisations

People who read organizational blogs perceive an organization's relational maintenance strategies as demonstrating more of a conversational human voice than those who read only the organization's traditional Web content or those in a control group who read Web content unrelated to the organization(Kellehar,Miller,2006)

The CISCO Blog is an open discussion forum where Cisco leaders address key technology issues and where community interaction is encouraged. By hosting a blog with the above viewpoint CISCO first built an image of the company as an authority in technology and developed a community to share its ideas.After developing a dignified readership base, by posting entries like “Patent Board: CISCO is #1 Leader in Telecom”, Cisco has managed to create an image of a highly competitive company which is centre-of-the business-universe telecommunications. Also, by featuring excellent reviews from the Fortune, Wired and Financial Times, CISCO has done well to use its blog effectively towards brand promotion!

The corporate blog of Tata Interactive Systems(TIS), gives a peek into the work being done and products being launched by TIS for learning disabilities of children with special educational needs, by showcasing the Tata Learning Disability Forum, Also, by hosting a category 'Life at TIS', TIS shares its organisational culture with the world.

Corporate Social Responsibility Blogs , like those of Mc Donald's and Hewlett Packard are fast catching on. With Mc Donald's discussing issues closer to health, nutrition and food safety , this endeavour contributes to an image building exercise, as a company valuing quality of food provided to the consumers. This is a good effort for a company which has faced a lot of criticism towards promoting unhealthy food habits.

From the perspective of Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, blogging is not an appendage to Sun’s marketing communications strategy today-it is central to it. Blogs have authenticated the Sun brand more than any typical advertising campaign and associated with Sun a respectable degree of tenacity and authenticity.

Social media is here to stay

Responses from senior executives across companies in various countries profile an increasing understanding of the use of social media to harness market intelligence and understand consumer perception.(Source:Research done by media company Cymfony)

Tagcrowd of my blog

ahuja (8) blogging (43) brand (16) building (14) capital (6) co-creation (6) cocreation (4) collaborative (10) comcast (8) comments (9) communities (19) company (7) consumer (23) corporate (21) council (5) customer (13) develop (4) employee (6) equity (4) experience (4) generated (9) interact (6) interesting (5) knowledge (9) labels (7) leverage (4) links (7) management (6) marketing (11) media (25) networking (8) online (21) organisations (4) participation (8) pm (5) post (18) product (7) relationship (5) resources (5) share (4) site (4) social (24) sunsilk (4) television (6) think (5) tools (9) value (7) vandana (8) videos (4) web (24)

created at TagCrowd.com

TagCrowd is a web application for visualizing word frequencies in any user-supplied text by creating what is popularly known as a tag cloud or text cloud.Saw the same at Pete Blackshaw's blog and thought I should give it a try.

Marketers start to use social networks for CRM instead of ads

An ADAGE article on Marketers start to use social networks for CRM instead of ads strengthens my understanding on the uses of social media as a tool catering to customer engagement, loyalty and satisfaction. The key objectives of CRM, at the end of the day are Customer Aquisition and Retention, and social media has offered tools to cater to each of these objectives by strengthening relationships, building networks and starting a two way communication process with the customers.

While the ad age article traces how first time product users can connect with experienced ones on these networks, creating a rich customer experience sharing platform, my article on how Corporate Blogs can make organisations customer centric had focussed on how auto giant General Motors had used its blog to maintain and nurture its relationships with its customers. By allowing companies to build product brands, create a customer-centric image, and by giving people a contact point by attaching a face or name they can interact with, corporate blogs serve as for a for consumer redressal and help build intrinsic relationships between the company and it's customers.

Social media and it's contribution to CRM maybe a subject of discussion today...but will definitely provide companies with a competitive edge, in the long term!!!

The 5th P of marketing-Participation

After Product, Price, Place and Promotion, Mario Sundar aptly talks about Participation being the 5th element of the marketing-mix.

"If you were wondering where does Social Media Marketing fit into the classic “4 Ps of Marketing” model, check this out. Traditional 4 Ps of Marketing encompass Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Social Media as well as social networking sites enable the Promotion aspect, especially the Word of Mouth part of it. (Related question I posed on LinkedIn Answers — 44 answers). Subsequently, the Word-of-Mouth component enables the 5th P of Marketing - Participation."

As the Web 2.0 mantra-
Create, Publish, Share, Connect, Influence and Collaborate, focusses intrinsically on Participation, the same is fast emerging as a tool for marketers to promote products, build brand equity, engage customers, and track customer satisfaction.

Consumer Reviews and the brand.

Effect of Consumer generated reviews on web site metrics, for a few selected companies , as per a Social commerce report, 2007, from e-consultancy and bazaarvoice, reiterates my earlier post on 'Peer reviews and consumer behaviour'.Consumer generated reviews are becoming an important source of consumer product adoption process.

As per the report, surveying retailers in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe, the findings were as follows-

77% reported site traffic increases
56% reported improved conversion rates
42% reported higher average order values

At least 73% respondents felt that these reviews resulted in Improved customer retention and loyalty, while Improved site conversion rates and Better search engine optimisation stood out as the other benefits accrued with these reviews.

Social media is decidely fast emerging as a tool for organisations to gain competitive advantage over others.

Product reviews and the collaborative web

As customer/consumer reviews gain importance,and become an intrinsic component of the product adoption process, by influencing consumer behaviour, a google trend graph on these key terms looks like this-


Customer Review is denoted in Blue while Consumer Review in Red and Product Review in Yellow. The regions included in this trend chart are U.S.A, U.K., India, Australia and Canada.

For market intelligence to collect and disseminate information across the organisation, finding relevant information on products strengths and weaknesses can be undertaken through the following ways-

Independent customer goods and reviews forums-Epinions.com, Consumerreview.com, Rateital.com, Bizrate.com.

Distributor or sales agent feedback sites-Amazon.com

Combo-sites offering customer reviews and expert opinions-
The advantage of this type of review site lies in the fact that a product supplier can compare opinions from the experts with those from consumers.A search for the 'iphone' yielded 1015 resources while the 'Apple iphone' yielded 655 results!!!

Customer-complaint sites-

Putting Customer-reviews on company websites-As per a social commerce report,2007,published by e-consultancy and Bazaarvoice, surveying retailers in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe, the findings were as follows-
77% reported site traffic increases
56% reported improved conversion rates
42% reported higher average order values

Consumer Generated media and it's impact on Brand visibility, product purchase and increasing customer-share is a foregone conclusion.

Harry Potter Marketing

Graham Hill's reference to the concept of "Harry Potter Marketing", while talking about marketers not taking the passage of time into account when marketing to loyal customers made interesting reading.The insensitivity of organisations in changing their product offerings to their loyal customers as they age is appalling.

The Harvard Business Review's February edition had a long article about Breakthrough Ideas. One of the ideas was keeping the brand (and its marketing) relevant to customers as they age by changing its value propositions, marketing messages and delivery capabilities. This the authors called 'Harry Potter Marketing' in recognition of the way the character both stays the same (at the core) but changes (in behaviour) as he ages.

Harry Potter Marketing defined-The concept of changing value propositions, marketing messages and delivery capabilities to loyal customers with time, while keeping the brand loyalty intact.

Businesses need to do the necessary cleaning up and updation of data time and again to keep abreast of developments. Besides, it is high time organisations stopped taking their loyal customers for granted!!!!

Walmart-Embracing CGM for better Search Engine Rankings?

Another new addition to the world of Consumer Generated Media...Walmart allows it's consumers to post product ratings and reviews
'Real Opinions-Smart shopping-See what walmart customers from coast to coast are saying about our huge selection of products.'

Chief Marketing Officer Cathy Halligan was quoted in a Reuters report as saying the opportunity to review products is the No. 1 customer-requested feature. Being the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart has been putting up efforts in the last few weeks to integrate its Web site more closely with its stores.

According to the Wal-Mart estimates, roughly 130 million customers visit one of its stores or its Web site every week and 75 percent of those customers are active online.

So what are the benefits Walmart can hope to accrue from this move?

1.Better Search Engine RankingsAs per an adage article, the real outcome maybe an improved performance with respect to search engine rankings-a crucial factor in the performance of online retailers.

The reviews give Wal-Mart thousands of additional pages of content to be indexed by major search engines, which look favorably on unique content, such as reviews, compared with pages with basic product details that any retailer could have.
"Searches related to product reviews typically get a high volume of queries, so Wal-Mart could see a material increase in organic search traffic to its site," said Peter Hershberg, managing partner at the search-marketing firm Reprise Media.

2.Increased consumer loyalty

3.Encouragement to consumers to return to the website more often.

4.Incorporation of consumer feedback to facilitate product-decisions.

5.Influencing consumer purchase as large no. of consumers depend on peer reviews

The above endeavours usually lead to better consumer engagement which eventually leads to increased purchase intentions. How much these will impact sales, only time will tell.

Interesting way to express Consumer Dissatisfaction

Expressing dissatisfaction over the way cheese is inserted in a sandwich at Subway, this cartoon from Lefthandedtoons is an interesting way to use the power of Consumer Generated Media. Source:ADAGE

Food Marketers and the society

More society concious corporates are venturing out to publically pledge their resolves not to advertise food products not meeting requisite nutritional standards to children under 12. As per an adage article on More Major food marketers establish food advertising limits', several major corporates like Cadbury Adams,Campbell,Coca-Cola,General Mills, Hershey,Kellogg's ,Kraft, Mars,McDonald's,Pepsi and Unilever are the coalition of companies who have decided to curb spending on unhealthy foods....

Consumer Generated Media - How peer reviews highly influence consumer buying behaviour

Here is something which corroborates my thoughts on Opinion Leaders and CGM and The era of the empowered consumers-
A report published at ReportonBusiness.com about Online Buyers scouring for deals

The findings of the report include-

1. More and more online buyers are turning to peer-reviews for product related advice, before adopting a product.

"When asked to note their most trusted information source, sixty per cent of online buyers said consumer reviews compared to 31 per cent who said newspapers or magazines."

2.Large no. of online buyers indulge in comparison shopping and use social networking sites to do so.

3.Online buyers are early adopters of social networking such as writing or reading blogs, customer reviews, and community websites. They're more likely to share their opinions and give reviews online than people who shop the old-fashioned way.

4.As social netwroking sites abound with users, they will be areas of most potential for e-commerce.

5.Embracing advertising in the web's community sites appears to be very promising for marketers.

Hope the heads of the organisations (The customer was king....)hesitant to adopt CGM as a promotional tool are listening!!!!

Social media and the iphone

The Apple iphone has been an explicit example of how social media was used to create a buzz around a product, in the pre-launch phase, as a marketing strategy.
Blogpulse graphs are a clear indicator that the buzz about iphone at the time of launch was higher as compared to the one around the time of release. With as many as 244,626 blog posts about the iphone being tracked by technorati as per date, it will be important to monitor the for the same post-adoption by consumers, as CGM will come into play to showcase the positive as well as negative reactions as product-users.

Case study on buzz created through social media for iphone posted by Nielson Buzzmatrix,is a graphic account tracing the amount of impact of social media as a marketing tool for a product.

Consumers can make or break brands

In the words of Chris Ward, Commercial Director, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions,

"Social networking has changed the rules of the game and consumers now have the power to make or break a brand. This type of relationship provides a two way dialogue where the brand receives feedback and the social networker could be monetised for their efforts – positive or negative.”

It is common knowledge now that the huge traffic on social networks has made them very interesting marketspaces for marketers ineterested in brand building and product positioning. The changing attitudes to social communication and research figures hugely indicative of the potential of these networks has not only made these social networks important components of the value chain but also a complete market segment that needs to be targetted.

As advertisers move to understand the dynamics of this media,the consumer demographics and behavioural aspects, it is important to understand that groups of people interacting socially observe an etiquette and targetting them will need to be sensitively planned and executed.

Some recent usage trends of social media by corporates have been -

1. The Apple iphone has a myspace profile and as of date, already has 469 friends.It may be recalled that the Apple ipod pink nano which had a profile to promote the product, had amassed as many as 80,000 friends on myspace, before the site was removed. Nice promotional strategy by Apple

2.UK based Topshop by maintaining an online profile on Myspace through a participation in the community, special offers and discounts was able to generate a sizeable amount of visits, as per a report from Hitwise.

3.SouthWest Airlines has a group on myspace,having over 1000 members for those working/associated with southwest airleins. This includes the loyal southwest fyers.The idea is to form a community to share information, plan trips, share travel tips and network.

4.Creation of virtual spaces by VOLVO and MSN on windows live spaces.Consumers were invited to write about their exciting experiences and adventures in a Volvo-brande "What's your story" area.
Here Volvo was able to tap into the motivational factors behind an individual seeking to be an opinion leader feeling like anempowered consumer.

In view of the need to engage the online consumers,Microsoft has released the ‘Word of the Mouse’ Advertising Guidelines recommendations for usage of social networks for proliferation of their brands.

1. Understand consumer’s motivations for using social networks
- 75% of British users use the sites to keep in touch with friends and family
- Approximately half use it to express opinions and views on topics of interest
- 49% use social networks to deepen relationships with like-minded people.

2. Express themselves as a brand
People are using social networks to express their individuality. Networks can be used to express a side of a brand people don’t normally see and encourage them to interact with it – but it needs to remain authentic.

3. Create and maintain good conversations
Individuals are powerful in this environment – they are the content creators, conversation creators and community creators. Brands that are willing to have a dialogue could benefit.

4. Empower participants
You are entering a world of empowered participants who control their own content, are expressing their individuality and would welcome having this power over branded properties on their Space.

5. Identify online brand advocates
Advertisers need to identify relevant networking sites i.e. a site which includes people who already use/buy a company’s product and align to this audience and existing customer segmentation models.
By researching blogging habits or comments on a product in this environment, advertisers can reach out to influentials and begin a dialogue, for example by offering free samples or advanced product releases.

6. Behave like a social networker
A fundamental principle is that the best advertisers on Spaces will behave like the best Spaces owners by:
- Being creative
- Being honest and courteous (ask permission)
- Being individual
- Being conscious of the audience
- Updating regularly

As Advertisers understand that they need to gradually focus on the networked aspects of these communities and use them for spreading messages virally, these social networks provide profound relationship building opportunities with the consumers.

The consumer was the king and we all seemed to know it.

According to the fifth annual PRWeek/Manning Selvage & Lee Marketing Management Survey, polling 279 U.S. chief marketing officers, VPs of marketing, and marketing directors and managers, and focussing on new media/CGM, integrated marketing and industry ethics, only about 12% respondents had CGM on their mind when considering marketing platforms.

Now why is this so?
CGM or consumer generated media is gaining imporatnce as the newly empowered consumers finds himself with a voice to express his opinions and post purchase emotions.

Organisations on one hand have a set of satisfied customers generating content about their positive experiences and influencing product adoptions by their friends and relatives, and on the other hand have to contend with unhappy customers sharing their woes with the threat of doing so in a technologically empowered digital environment capable of replicating the thoughts umpteen times, as people take to reading each others creations and linking to them.

As per the ADAGE article on the above subject, reasons for non-adoption of CGM as a promotion tool by several organisations stems from-

1. Fear of empowering a consumer to the point of no control.
2. No clear ROI on the subject yet.
However, the cost-effectiveness of this media over traditional media is bound to eventually let it get into vogue sooner or later.

Agreed that organisations are wary of embracing a medium where the echo of the consumer voice may be uncontrollable, but in an era where marketers are talking about
-Customer Relationship Management
-Customer Lifetime Values
-Increasing customer shares rather than market share
-Product Customisation
-Customer data warehousing and datamining and
-Using customers as brand evangelists,

will it not be contradictory to keep the consumer voice muffled?...After all, the consumer was the king...and we all seemed to know it.

Society concious corporates and the consumer

Coca-Cola recently entered into a tie-up with environmental group WWF. As part of a $ 20 m initiative, Coca-Cola is investing in 8 fresh water programmes overseen by WWF in regions where it has bottling operations.In return WWF will advise the drinks firm how to improve it's use of water , make it's bottling operations more efficient and reduce it's carbon footprint.As companies balance their objectives of profits, by focussing on the consumer, while also taking care of society's interests, the Societal Marketing approach to marketing is much in focus.

In an era of environmental problems, resource shortages, population growth, worldwide economic problems and neglected social services, there is a rising need of organisations which are sensitive to these issues to adopt the SOCIETAL MARKETING CONCEPT .

This concept of Marketing leads organisations to determine the needs and wants of target consumers and deliver desired levels of customer satisfaction more effectively and efficiently than competitors in a way that maintains or improves the consumer's and society's wellbeing.

Responding to nutritional concerns across the world, the $11 billion Kellog's company has decided to phase out advertisments targetting younger children for most if their products in case they do not meet nutritional guidelines.Mc Donalds has started churning out advertisments for adults. As consumer advocacy groups fight against anorexia across the world, Uniliver has announced a set of guidelines barring subsidiaries from using excessively thin models in a bid not to promote unhealthy 'slimness' in their advertisements.

Approaches like the above showcase the dedication of the organisations towards consumer welfare and positively influence their credibility. As more and more corporates embrace the concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility and consumer welfare, good corporate citizenship breeds not only consumer satisfaction, but also aids corporates in their efforts towards customer aquisition and retention.

Social networking and the collaborative environment

An interesting post by Eric Kintz, CMO, HP to take a look at Facebook's marketing potential.Early explorations for facebook's potential for marketing

How facebook's integrated collaboration environment could be a one-stop shopping avenue is described best in The Teenybopper Network by Andrew Mc Afee, Associate professor, Harvard Business School. His description of Facebook as collaborationware that spreads like wildfire and what exactly motivates people to get involved with this technology facilitated network building -"The desire to be popular and make friends" sums up the concept behind the ever increasing numbers on these social networks.
Also,
Facebook now open to enterprising developers talks about the innumerable applications being offered to developers to customise facebook to needs of the enterprise.

Another interesting post at the Gilbane Group Blog Facebook and enterprise 2.0 throws up kindof unexpected results. On a query on which collaboration technologies youngsters would use over the next 2 years in their jobs, email emerged at the top of the list. This was fairly acceptable considering that email is the primary source of interaction ad formal data communication in any enterprise today, but the tremendously low expected usage of blogs/wikis and a networking platform like facebook was a departure from the current picture emerging with the increased usage of these networking platforms.After all, appearances are deceptive!!