Online Deal and Sharing Platform

Running several social media campaigns we have found some interesting stats from coupon and online offer users. People using online offers or coupons spend more than those without. We have also discovered when people browse online they typically spend more than those who call in and order on the phone.

Deal-seekers, people who try to save money by using social-shopping sites like Groupon or coupon directories like RedPlum.com, may actually be even more valuable to the retail industry than people who buy product at list price. The reason – they spend more!

E-mailing opt-in’s (surfers providing permission for retailers to email them) conducting effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are the most effective ways to drive customers. Affiliate marketing and online ads (paid links to commercial destinations) are the third-most efficient way for consumer goods and services companies to get online business. Coupons are effective trackable affiliate links as users have to click on them  and opt-in to get the deal, not just visit the site selling the product they want.

Coupon sites like RedFlag.ca deals succeed because the business of aggregating coupons is very strong. Each link is a CPA, or cost-per-action link, which pays out at a much higher rate than CPC, or cost-per-click advertising links. Retailers don’t mind the coupon carrying customers. While profit margins are lower advertisers effectively use coupons to increase the ‘average order’ of the customer.

WhiteCloud Marketing utilizes a social sharing platform names WhiteFire Social. WhiteFire delivers organic user based sharing for offers and introduces a leader-board highlighting top sharers. Rewards go top sharers with free product and other rewards. The tool is best set up as a custom app in Facebook but can be used on the web or a mobile device. Through sharing and recognizing top sharers WhiteCloud has seen huge increase (50-100% increase) in opt-ins and redemption of deals and coupons for its customers. This massive increase translates into more effective use of the marketing spend in attracting product sales and creating awareness.

All in all the online deal space is changing consumer habits. How we buy is increasingly happening in the digital space on the web and mobile devices.

My Influencer Map - to see yours click link below

Linked-in creates essentially a network of people you connect with and influence. In return, your network may influence your decisions. As a B2B tool this is fantastic way to see that you ‘as a brand’ are connected and influencing others organically.

You can see the way all your connections are related to each other? Identify the hubs between your professional careers?

Your map is color-coded to represent affiliations or groups from your professional career, such as your previous employer, college classmates, or industries you’ve worked in. In my InMap, my LinkedIn print colleagues are in dark blue, while my former colleagues at HP  are maroon and professional independents are in Tangerine. I connected with these key groups are unique times in my group and Linked-In does a great job pulling these together.

Big names represent contacts who are most influential and connected within that specific cluster or group. When you click on a contact within a circle you’ll see their profile pop up on the right, as well as lines highlighting how they’re connected to your connections.

My map is actually a view of how my professional world has been created over time. It helps to label each color and explore your connections to see who are the major connectors on your diagram. You can use those insights to measure your own impact or influence, or create opportunities for someone else.

Take some time visually exploring your network. You will enjoy this fascinating study on both influencers, connections and how they intersect and join

To access your  InMap, go to http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com.

I have to assume there is some influence but you cannot determine true social influence without a closed loop. A full closed loop is a click through, conversion and/or a buy metric. There is software permitting the closed loop but it is not built into the Twitter platform. If and when the closed loop analytics come into play with Twitter its got to be dead simple. Google has done a great job in providing a closed loop data with search. You can see the click through, see the visits to the site and determine conversions to leads or an eCommerce buy. Google’s pay per click and organic search model is not simple but does tell you the value of the searchers coming to your site.

The marketingpilgrim.com says “the number one most misleading metric for Twitter users is number of followers. People tout these numbers and claim ‘expertise’ based on them but in most cases there is no clear line to be drawn between number of followers and actual influence.”

Twitter has over 200 million accounts, and they are aggressively moving into other languages. It’s a great social service, growing at a steady rate over the next few years. In my view providing the key closed loop analytics is crucial for success in the marketing context.

Social Graph: Sample of Brand Influence over Three Generations

We have just completed a 28 day social media campaign with a Fortune 500 technology company on their Canadian Facebook Page. We had some outstanding high level results which I would like to share with you. We set up the ability for visitors to post and share stories and videos on the Facebook Fan Page and invite their friends to vote on their entry. The users had to ‘Like’ the page and then opt-in with the WhiteFire Social sharing app. The site had just over 300 ‘Likes’ on Day 1 – by the 28th day we had exceeded 7,500 ‘Likes’. In addition, the WhiteFire app brought in a 200% increase in total visitors and a 100% increase in opt-ins to the site.

Keys to Success:

1) Sharing the offer or story with friends through their favourite social channel
2) Public display of leading votes on the  campaign leader-board  motivating ‘social rockstars’ to continue sharing
3) Running the campaign inside of Facebook for optimum sharing
4) Offering weekly prizes for posting an entry

Having been in the direct marketing business for over 12 years, we have never seen such outstanding results from  a Direct Marketing campaign.  Social Media Sharing literally ignited this campaign. We saw 11,000 visitors over a 3 week period come from a Pay per Click campaign in Facebook. We saw an additional 20,000 visitors through ‘Social Sharing’  - we were blown away. The total visits from the original Pay per Click campaign and the social sharing came to 31,000. If the cost of each click to draw in the initial 11,000 was $2.00, the  social media sharing accounted fort 20,000 x $2.00 = $40,000 in calculated value. We saw a huge impact from Social sharing technology bringing enhanced value to brands using Social Media to promote awareness of new products and services.

Finally, top social influencers brought in over 4,500 opt-in’s. In fact, the top 10 social influencers tracked through the campaign brought in over 45% of all the opt-ins. This indicated power influencers draw in other power influencers and these together significantly increased the final results of the campaign. In fact the top social influencers increased the visitors to the Facebook site by over 100%.

Gossieaux further explains, traditional market research and focus groups does not take into account people want to ‘keep up with the Joness’. Some may prefer a brand such as Lululemon Athletica vs a discount brand of similar quality and pay a higher price – because their local tribe or network they are part of prefers this brand. People will make up a socially acceptable story for the reason they bought the product or service after the purchasing decision, that can be vastly different then the original reason for purchasing the product. During a focus group they might evaluate based on a market framework vs a Social framework.

How can this apply to your brand or service? You may decide or opt in and focus your brand on a group or tribe rather than typical demographic characteristics. For example, rather than choose to market in Facebook using male /female  or age choices you can purchase paid ads by group or geographic area. You can measure your click through rate and conversions and recognize a new market and even pay lower pay per click marketing fees. Your firm can decide to join several relevant tribes or groups inside of Facebook to connect with interested parties based on the ‘paid’ real-time research you have conducted using the Pay per Click ads in Facebook.

A networked Advertising Model

The impact  of the mom bloggers, niche business bloggers will continue to make in roads into the advertising market. Software systems will aggregate the information from these posts and report this back to marketing and ad agencies. Brands will begin to use these bloggers, power Twitter and Facebook users to publicize and drive awareness for new products and services.Takeaway: Social Influencers are now being tracked and those with significant followers will be contacted by brands for promotion and awareness.

2) Increasing Importance of Personal Branding

Almost all people will revert to reviewing your status online to determine your credibility, impact and skills. Here are some key predictions:
• Personal brand will become consolidated
• Relative online transparency will create a positive net impact
• Job hunters will increasingly use online references to find the right match
• Developing a strong online presence will be as important as the development of your financial credit rating
• Third party reviews and recommendations will increase

Takeaway: Start/Enhance your profile on Linked-in  and Facebook and engage with friends and professionals.

3) Content Distribution through Social Media

We all know that “Content is King” strong through the 1990s and then “Links became Queen” during the 2000 era. Today its also essential to keep customers engaged with a brand through Social network strategy via docile and mobile touchpoints such as Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, mobile apps and email. Effectively delivery of information through new media such as YouTube, Slideshare will grow.

Takeaway: Start/Enhance your blog and network information to major social communities.

4) Digital Direct Marketing

Prospects and customers increasingly use multiple channels and use both offline and online media. Online channels such as Facebook and Twitter are powerful but email cannot be discounted in direct marketing. Since outbound contacts are still vital use the right email message frequency and content to help repeat sales. Firms have developed an automated email lifecycle with the right business rules to maximise engagement and sale. Many can attribute a trackable revenue value of between $50 and $150 per email per year.

Takeaway: Use email bi-weekly to connect with customers and allow them to share the content on social media to acquire net new opt-ins.

5) Twitter for Customer Support

The main goal of customer service is to help someone resolve their issues. While phone conversations can help solve problems, wait times do not. Twitter is a lightning-fast platform that can help sift through and solve problems quickly. If it’s a small issue, a single tweet may be enough. For a more complex problem, the brand can initiate a deeper conversation with the customer. Since everything is transparent, people prefer almost real-time responses and search for other questions from customers. Twitter will increase but still has a small foot-print in Customer Support. According to a recent post by Diane Clarkson of Forrester data show the number of online consumers to use Twitter for customer support to be under 1%. (Source: North American Technographics Customer Experience Online Survey, Q4 2009 and US Online Omnibus Q4 2010.)

Takeaway: Review some of your customer support options and experiment with Twitter.

6) Search Engine Optimization Gets More Complex.
Customers naturally use search engines as their primary vehicle to find information on products and services.  But its not a one search engine game anymore as Google’s been joined by Bing in the US market and there are important local players like China’s Baidu and Russia’s Yandex.  Now you have local search which has become increasingly important and ranked high on Google search. Yelp and FourSquare are significant players in Local Search.

Takeaway: Hire an experienced SEO firm to support your engagement.

7) Personalized Marketing Customizes Messages To Individual.

Expect more personalization capability to be embedded in websites in 2011.  Regular visitors to a web site will see a page based on all the information collected from previous visits.  Marketers will present personalized sites to these customers by organizing information and prioritizing it based on the individual’s liking.  Products and services offered on those pages will be pre-configured. “Anonymous” visitors to websites will get customized messages based on referring URL, search terms, geo-location and other insights.  Personalized marketing will be extended beyond the website to other digital channels, including social media marketing, mobile marketing, and email marketing.

Takeaway: Using Personalized URL’s or PURL’s eerily brings personalization to the end user.

Entrepreneur and Author

I took this title from the Vancouver Sun writing on Guy Kawasaki’s visit  to the Internet Marketing Conference in Vancouver.

Guy says it’s no longer big business and media giants who determine whether or not a new service or product will succeed. It’s the unknowns, ordinary folks who have become the key influencers. And companies must remember that when they are trying to win people over to their ideas, products and services.

“I think marketing is completely reversed,” said Kawasaki. It used to be that companies sought favourable reviews from influential publications like Fortune and the Wall Street Journal but today’s consumers are more likely to be influenced by blogs or Twitter users they follow.

“The new way is that nobodies are the new somebodies,” said Kawasaki.
Instead of top down delivery, marketing happens from the bottom up, he said.
“Someone you’ve never heard of embraces your product, they love the product and they spread the word,” he said.
“You never know which mommy blogger is going to make your product successful.”

Developing trust is increasingly becoming a measure of someone’s credibility online, almost like a credit score. Kawasaki says “You can’t enchant people if you’re not trustworthy. And if you want people to trust you, you have to trust them. Companies like Zappos with its paid shipping return policy are an example of how trusting customers can pay off. Be a mensch, someone who can be trusted, who is honorable and has a world perspective — think Nelson Mandela if you’re looking for an example.”

People who have an established significant social networks will see the beginning of a pay-off in 2011. They will be noticed.  Social Media tracking software will begin to reveal Social Media rockstars and reveal their influence and impact on consumer brands.

With the addition of Twitter in Google search results or Google’s soon-to-be-released Social Search, social results will not be managed by Google’s infamous PageRank but by social influence and relevance to your social network. Discovering people that can help you to reach your desired consumer will become more effective and important.

Marketing is changing. Marketing agencies who recognize this impact will help their clients determine how to support growth with Social Media Influencers.

Canada has some of one of highest internet penetration and social networking usage rates. Social network users see social media as a hub for communication, entertainment and information.

“Canadians readily adopt at rates higher than users in the US, but gaining the trust of users on a social network is a brand manager’s biggest obstacle,” said Mike Froggatt, eMarketer research analyst and author.

By year’s end, Froggart estimates about 15.1 million internet users in Canada will have visited social networking sites at least monthly, up from 13.6 million in 2009. Penetration will rise from 59% of the internet audience this year to 68% by 2014.

“As internet users increase the time they spend on social networks, social media accounts for an increasing share of ad impressions,” said Froggatt. “Prices remain low because of abundant inventory, but increasing budgets and competition for inventory will drive prices up. As a result, now is the time for brand managers to test new social media campaigns on users.”

Traditional Media Channels such as newspaper, television, radio, direct mail deliver both data and information. The information highlights a product/services plus price point or sale. For over a century now this information has changed us from rural based producers to city based consumers. The information delivered through traditional media is data driven, its delivered in tight short segments and is non-reciprocal. Reports generated by Neilson and other data collectors supplied TV and other channel rankings

Social Networks

Social networks differ in they typically deliver  knowledge not data or information. Knowledge is powerful. It provides, hints, examples, self-help, tips and other key elements of knowledge form a third party that is interested in providing authentic information collaboratively.

For example, a social network I have joined on Twitter speaks to all Apple product with a Canuck twist called @iPhoneinCanada

Brand Influence

Gary N. founder of @iPhoneinCanada is a brand influencer for Apple. He has developed trusted relationship with over 8,000 followers, he has growing inter-related web of followers and connections and has Social assets on Facebook, Linked-in and other Social Sites. If Apple wanted a key connection,  a platinum card carrying brand advocate – Gary has to be in the running (Gary – I hope you got a free iPhone 4). Gary has influence and is effectively shaping the landscape of the Apple brand in Canada.