Why B2B tech marketers have trouble assessing social media ROI

I recently received an email from Adobe (Omniture) promoting a Forrester research report entitled: "How to Assess the Value of Social Media in B2B Marketing Measuring the impact of blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter." The report is written by Forrester's Laura Ramos (on Twitter at @lauraramos) who I admire. She writes frequently about social media ROI and also B2B marketing.

I find it fascinating that Forrester put out a report that directly describes my job function and the space in which I work. Not only do I focus on social media marketing -- using YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media to promote my company's services -- but we also target IT decision makers, roles such as CIOs, Directors of IT, IT Manager, project managers, etc. and this is all under the umbrella of B2B marketing.

Also, good timing, considering just yesterday, my short presentation at the Integrated Marketing Summit here in Saint Louis focused almost exclusively on how exactly you can utilize social media in the B2B space to drive ROI - results.

I downloaded this free report and will share some highlights and my thoughts with you. These are four key ways that B2B marketers are looking at social media marketing and how they are assessing the value of it:

1. B2B marketers are unsure about how much time and money to invest in social media marketing internally or with agencies. This makes sense, since the ROI is very difficult to calculate. (More on that in a bit).The study quotes a Director of Marketing: "My marketing resources are finite, so every dollar or hour I put into social must come from somewhere else. How do I figure out where all of this fits in my marketing mix and campaign plans?"
   
2. Social marketing programs that don’t focus on a specific audience and objective get preoccupied with the tools and fail to connect with customers.Oooh, this is a really good one. It's so true. Too many companies "want to be in social media" or feel like they "have to be on Facebook" or "must try out this Twitter thing" and they end up creating profiles or blogs and turning them into online graveyards. Internal bloggers lose interest and get tied up with work. Most of our competitors, in fact, have blogs live that haven't been published to in months! My boss and I put together a strategy a year ago that included a plan to maintain frequent updates to each of these sites and our blogs, and ideas for putting out compelling content. We've kept to that plan, and when it gets difficult to find the resources to provide relevant, insightful content about enterprise IT, we find a way to get it done.
   
   
3. B2B firms — more than half in a recent Forrester survey — react by spinning up poorly planned ad hoc programs with little organizational structure, process, or governance for support. It's interesting to me that Forrester found so many companies struggling with organizing their social media efforts properly, streamlining accountability, and focusing their strategy. My company decided last year to hire a dedicated Social Media Marketing Manager. Maybe that is what it takes to keep things organized. As a result, I don't feel like we've run into this problem. There aren't too many people stepping on each others' toes here. We do have a lot of experts internally who want to contribute to our social media efforts: See this active portals blog or see these recently homemade videos from one of our architects. When they want to get involved, we embrace it and encourage it, and my job is to facilitate their ability to get it out to our social media channels.
   
4. Few marketers say that they can measure the impact of social activity on sales lead productivity or quality and Few gain new leads, or customer advocates, from social pursuits. This is a common concern I hear throughout social media marketing discussions. "...many B2B
   marketers treat social media like an outbound communications channel, and our research highlights the consequences of this choice." 

Social media marketers should be saying to themselves, "Okay, we've engaged in social media, we 'get' Twitter and Facebook, and we know who our audience on these sites is. We are ready to start driving sales and leads now. How are we going to do it?" I am already starting to see the conversation shifting, both internally at my company as we have been heavily engaged on social media sites for over a year now, and also within the space across blogs and Twitter.

Now that we all understand how these sites work and how our target audience is choosing to use it to engage with us as brands, we can shift the discussion internally toward how to leverage that audience's attention and turn it into driving more interest in buying products and services. More importantly, as we establish online relationships with our target market, how can we identify their "need" for our services at the right time and introduce our solution in a way that doesn't "push" or "over-sell"? We are beginning to shift our strategic goals for social media marketing from "drive brand awareness" toward "drive leads" and ultimately aim for a positive ROI in the time and energy being spent in this space.

Forrester then presents a basic model to help tech marketers assess social returns:

1. Think about business value when defining social objectives
2. Outline costs and expected benefits
3. Determine risks and possible gains
4. Decide how social may impact existing marketing methods
5. Measure activity and engagement

One other element of the report that stood out to me as a best practice is to "Rigorously develop metrics that correspond to each assessment element." We have invested time and effort in monitoring many metrics related to social media marketing - in fact, almost every metric available on each site or in third party tools that gauge quantity of followers, reach, impact, awareness and engagement. 

How "Anyone Know" search on Twitter turns search marketing on its head

Last week, I spoke at Integrated Marketing Summit in downtown Saint Louis. I was on a social media marketing panel. One of the key take-aways from my presentation was the "Anyone Know" search concept for Twitter.com, explored and explained by search marketing pro Danny Sullivan many months ago. I shared Danny's ideas from his original post on SearchMarketingLand about it back in May. Here are the key points related to how searching "Anyone Know" and then your product or service can help you prospect leads or potential customers on Twitter. These are highlight clips I have taken from his article:

Amplify’d from searchengineland.com

people effectively “search” on Twitter within their actual tweets when they ask for help from their friends and followers. Sometimes they get answers. Sometimes they don’t. But they definitely ask for help — a lot. You can see this by searching for anyone know on Twitter:

Just as people “broadcast” their desires by doing searches on Google, so they are broadcasting their need for help on Twitter, if you search for the right terms to locate questions. “Anyone know” is just one example of that type of question-related term (can anyone tell me is another example).

One person wants “legit” pizza — offer them a coupon! Another person wants good pizza places in LA — send them a link to your store locator. Another wants a discount for good grades from a rival chain. Come up with something similar to entice them.

This type of outreach has to be done right. No one wants reply spam.

To me, the ability to reach out to an individual via search and answer their question is a revolutionary addition to the usual search marketing.Read more at searchengineland.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/dz9v

The Holy Grail of PPC & the Conversion Trinity

A the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago this week, Bryan Eisenberg, SES Advisory Board and NYTimes Bestselling Author, bryaneisenberg.com, gave some compelling ways of looking at conversion in Pay Per Click advertising. The session, by name, promised to unlock The Secret Formula to Boost Response:

Amplify’d from www.aimclearblog.com

The Holy Grail of PPC marketing is achieved when we as marketers align targeting with: The best ad copy A useful landing page And great CTR To reach the Holy Grail, we must be aware of the Conversion trinity: Be relevant Be valuable Make the next action obvious Read more at www.aimclearblog.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/dcss

The new role of technology in the Marketing Department

There is a fantastic post today in AdAge Magazine. "The Case for a Chief Marketing Technologist: If Technology Is Now a Strategic Dimension of Marketing, Who Should Lead It?" by Scott Brinker.

I agree 100% with Brinker that technology is taking on an increasingly significant role within marketing, but of course, whether there is a "Chief Marketing Technologist" necessary at most organizations is really a case-by-case decision. Regardless of the structure or of titles, from my experience in the past few years as a technologically savvy marketer, I believe marketing leaders who embrace the use of technology in day-to-day analytics and execution of marketing strategy and foster a collaborative environment with the IT department are likely to be more efficient and effective in achieving their goals. Brinker makes many more solid points about the role of technology in marketing, and I've highlighted my favorites here:

Amplify’d from adage.com

Analytics software shapes your perception of your audience. Automation and optimization software influences the design of your marketing operations. A plethora of new advertising, social media and web technologies directly affect the experiences your customers have with you. These aren't mere implementation details -- increasingly, they're important strategic and brand-positioning choices. Who makes them, and how?

Simply put, marketing has become deeply entwined with technology. This didn't happen overnight; it's been sneaking up on us for a while. But because technology had been so tangential to marketing management for most of our history, the organizational structure of marketing has been slow to adjust to this new technology-centric reality.

marketing must officially take ownership of its technology platforms and strategies. And the first step of such ownership is to appoint someone to lead it.

Enter the chief marketing technologist. This is a senior management position, reporting to the CMO, with three key responsibilities. First: Choreograph all the disparate technologies under marketing's umbrella. Second: Nurture a growing technology subculture within marketing, raising the department's overall technical proficiency. And third: Collaborate with the CMO on strategy, translating the CMO's vision into technology with high fidelity -- while also inspiring the shape of that vision by advocating for what new technology can enable.

the most important skill they need is the ability to effortlessly map marketing ideas to technical requirements and, vice versa, map new technologies to marketing opportunities.

This is a marketer whose expertise is leveraging, scaling and governing technology.

In this Golden Age, not everyone in marketing needs to be a technologist, just as not everyone in marketing needs to be a "creative." But relevant technology expertise must become a native part of marketing's identity and, with a chief marketing technologist, a native part of its leadership.Read more at adage.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bfk5

I'll be at Integrated Marketing Summit in St. Louis, Oct 21st

I've been asked to participate on a panel to discuss social media best practices. It will be moderated by an esteemed colleague of mine, Brad Hogenmiller (@javastl) and I'm participating alongside another great social media maven David Siteman Garland (@TheRisetotheTop). I expect to be asked about using social media for B2B marketing, and we'll probably touch on tools and tricks of the trade.

I attended Integrated Marketing Summit last year when it was also hosted in downtown St. Louis, and I found the entire day to be highly valuable. The networking was indispensable, and the sessions were informative and valuable.

From the website:

"IMS is the signature summit for Marketing, Advertising and PR Professionals in both B-to-B and B-to-C markets throughout the U.S. IMS provides actionable insights, expertise and cutting-edge information in a convenient, affordable one-day educational format. And the best continues, with next-day, hands-on workshops presented by leading practitioners."

I would encourage everybody working in Marketing in St. Louis to attend this one-day summit.

The cost is $279 for all sessions and keynotes, continental breakfast, lunch, breaks and Happy Hour/Networking.

Some of the topics, as you can see from the agenda, look very interesting. Here's a link to my speaker bio: http://www.integratedmarketingsummit.com/speakers-bio.php?id=74

I hope you will join me!

Amplify’d from www.integratedmarketingsummit.com

Program A - Social Media Best Practices (Panel) Whether you are BtoB, BtoC, offering a considered purchase or selling a commodity, this multi speaker presentation will help you create an effective social media strategy that is right for your business. Moderated by Brad Hogenmiller,  (St Louis, MO). Speakers Include; David Siteman Garland, CEO/Executive Producer/Host, The Rise To The Top℠ (St Louis, MO) Erin Eschen, Online and Social Media Marketing Manager, Perficient (Orange County, CA) Leigh Mutert, Community Manager, H&R Block (Kansas City, MO) Kristy Meyer, Social Media Manager, Sigma Aldrich (St Louis, MO) Read more at www.integratedmarketingsummit.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bfik

Social Media Most Effective for Branding in B2B: But Can We Do Better?

What this study shows us primarily is that "In B2B marketing, social media is most effective at achieving branding goals." I agree with that, from my experience working in social media in B2B. But from my perspective, It's unfortunate to see such a drop off between increasing website traffic and generating leads. I'd like to see us as B2B marketers figure out tools or processes for closing that gap. I'd like to see more case studies and articles about those who are effectively generating very quantifiable and qualified leads into their sales pipeline directly from the relationships they are establishing with influencers and decision makers in their target demographic who are active on social media sites.

Amplify’d from www.marketingsherpa.com

Most Effective Use of Social Media In Achieving B2B Branding Goals Read more at www.marketingsherpa.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bcwt

Exciting News: We are moving back to Saint Louis, MO

This past January, my fiancé and I moved to Newport Beach, California. We have thoroughly enjoyed our time here - the weather, the beaches, the people -- everything. I retained my full-time role working remotely from home for the past nine months. Below is a recap of many of the things we've been able to to do since we moved here.

Very recently, we've decided to move back to St. Louis, MO in order to pursue a unique and exciting career opportunity for Chris! This will also allow us to spend much more time with family and friends. I am happy to say that I will remain in my full-time position and return to the office in West County each day.

We expect to be living in Clayton, MO for quite some time. Please keep in touch with me as I re-join one of the most active and connected networks of interactive media professionals in the country!

Some of the things we've enjoyed in Southern California and will never forget:

• Music Concerts at the Greek Theater, the Hollywood Bowl, the House of Blues Hollywood, the Viper Room and Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine.
• Fantastic OC restaurants: Javier's in Crystal Cove, Marche Moderne at South Coast Plaza, Andrea at the Pelican Hill, Blue Fin sushi, Napa Rose, The Beachcomber restaurant on the beach, Sapphire and the Rooftop Bar in Laguna Beach, and (of course) In-and-Out Burger ;-)
• World-class LA restaurants: Osteria Mozza, Bazaar by Jose Andres, Spago, Angelini Osteria, Mastro's and Providence
• Brunches and dinners at beautiful local resorts like Stonehill Tavern at the St. Regis in Dana Point, Pelican Hill in Newport Coast, Ritz Carlton Laguna Beach, and Montage Laguna Beach.
• Special events like the annual MLB All Star Game in Anaheim, the 2010 MTV Movie Awards and a corporate event at the House of Blues Anaheim
• Great spots on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, including the historic Chateau Marmont, the Den, the SLS Beverly Hills (Bar Centro), Sky Bar at the Mondrian.
• Excellent musical artists we've been able to see in California: RUSH, Peter Gabriel, Sammy Hagar, David Gray, Ray LaMontagne, Asia, Night Ranger, Steve Miller Band, the Cult, the Fixx, YES, Peter Frampton, Sting, Green Day, Dave Matthews, the Scorpions, the Kings of Leon, the Eagles, as well as Muse and MGMT at Coachella
• Miscellaneous good times including bicycling with Chris through Crystal Cove State Park, sun bathing on the beach, running on the beach with my dad, grabbing a shake at the Shake Shack, riding duffy boats around Newport Beach harbor, sailing on the Pacific Ocean down the coast, shopping and dining on Balboa Island with my sister, running in Cedar Grove park with my trail running group, cycling up Newport Coast Drive with my brother, hitting the farmer's market in Corona del Mar, going to a Lakers play-off game, watching surfers tackle 14 foot waves at "The Wedge," seeing the Cardinals play the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium, having many of our closest friends visit us for long weekends, watching the Angels play at Angels Stadium in Anaheim, and running a 5K race overlooking the ocean in Corona del Mar.

I owe a great deal of the "joie de vivre" that I enjoy daily to Chris.  I can never thank him enough for all he does for me and for our friends and family, and I am very much looking forward to our move back "home." See you soon!

Making Social Media Work for You, a presentation by Erin Steinbruegge of TheLoudFew

Erin Steinbruegge, my former online marketing partner-in-crime, fellow SEO, and one of my BFFs recently presented to a local St. Louis area group (ISES STL) on using Social Media Marketing to drive business results. I wasn't able to attend, but I was impressed with the presentation she later posted online. It's chock full of "ah ha" tips for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others, and it clearly maintains Erin's un-failingly fun approach to teaching, training and consulting.

She now runs TheLoudFew, an interactive marketing agency in St. Louis. 
Catch highlights from the video of her presenting as well as her recap here.

Here's the slide show:

Beyond The Cocktail Party - Making Social Media Work for You

View more presentations from The Loud Few.

Is search really "dead?" Why Wired Magazine is wrong

Today I received our latest issue of Wired in the mail, and the bright orange cover proclaims "The Web is Dead." Along with this assertion, the authors, Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff, claim that search (i.e. using Google to find what you're looking for) is a part of this death because mass consumers are turning to applications and APIs to use the Internet to get data and information less often than they turn to the Web (websites, accessed largely through search engines) to obtain what they're looking for. Chris Crum of WebProNews provides a nice summary of why Wired thinks so, and why they may be jumping the shark a little bit too soon with this declaration:

What it boils down to is that people will not stop using search engines, they will just use them less for certain kinds of searches if they have an app that they like for that particular kind of information. This is already happening.

So essentially, if you think about the fact that you can now get weather from your Weather Channel iPhone app or the native weather app on most smart phones, or that you can get sports scores from your MLB or ESPN app, and news from your AP app -- the list goes on -- then why would you need to go to Google? It's simply not as necessary to turn to Google, Yahoo, or Bing for as much as you used to. They call this "getting."

Crum quotes the article:

"Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting."

While this "getting" may reduce the amount of things many people use search engines to find, from my perspective, it cannot possibly eliminate the need for searching in at least three categories: 1) more obscure, long-tail needs, 2) in-depth research, and 3) to some extent, products they wish to purchase.

I love one of Crum's final thoughts on this topic:

If all of your eggs are in the search marketing basket, you better really start thinking about mobile and apps.

He's right, but don't just create a mobile app to have a mobile app, because particularly in the mobile space, the old mantra "If you build it, they will come," is almost entirely untrue. You have to have a utility for your mobile app - something that people will find useful, not just sales and marketing messages. 

More importantly -- and especially if you don't sell something that can be logically delivered via a mobile app (which mostly, right now, involves data such as weather, lyrics, scores, news, reports, content) but rather, you sell a tangible product --  look into mobile advertising before you start building an app. See how you might be able to advertise where your target market is already using apps that are relevant to what you offer. Get creative with it, but stay contextually relevant. Here is a great example of a company that's embracing mobile advertising in unique and compelling ways.

And  while it's true that search engines like Google index and provide links to the "indexable" or "crawlable" Web and cannot crawl content housed within apps (at this time), the concept of searching is at least not near it's death: Let's not forget the power (and necessity) of "searching" as it now exists within apps. Facebook has a search function, and I use mine all the time to find friends, companies, pages, etc. My weather app lets me search for a zip code or city. My Amazon app is all about search. While it recommends products I might like, it doesn't know exactly what kind of shoes I just saw on someone that I now want to buy - unless I search for them. I predict there will never be a time in which we are only "getting" and not "searching" as well.

Search is still definitely alive, but it is evolving, as are many other aspects of the Web, to adapt to the smart phone revolution. Yesterday's launch of Facebook's Places (currently limited to the Facebook iPhone app) makes a lot of sense at this time. Given the success of FourSquare and GoWalla, it's clear that people want to engage with the places and things they like to do when they're out and about with friends, smart phone in hand.

What do you think?

• How can we, as brands, serve them not just our address and venue name, but a rich experience with recommended menu items, favorite products, deals, etc? 
• Is your team having this conversation internally to see how mobile fits within your overall marketing strategy?  
• What have you tried that works? 
• Where are you running into road blocks? Do you agree that search is dying and won't evolve and sustain itself?

Additional rebuttals against Wired's article:
Wired Declares The Web Is Dead—Don’t Pull Out The Coffin Just Yet (TechCrunch)
The Web is Dead: Long Live the Cloud (NetworkWorld)
No, Wired, the Web is not 'dead' (Washington Post)
Blowback to Wired's "The Web is Dead" story (FierceCIO)

6 Great Social and Digital Media Articles

Flipboard App - for the iPad

I've been finding a lot of gems lately when it comes to write-ups about social media and becoming more successful in your digital marketing career. This is largely thanks to Flipboard on the iPad. If you own an iPad and you haven't downloaded this free (and revolutionary) app yet, you're missing out. It's the first visually appealing and immersive way to browse your Twitter and Facebook feeds as well as any RSS feed, article site, or Twitter list (activities I participate in almost hourly). 

When I discovered each of these articles, I shared them on my Twitter feed @ErinE - you can follow me there. 

The Inside Scoop on How Intel Manages Its Facebook Page
How to Write a Great Blog Post in Just 15 Minutes
eBay Ink Profiles Social Media Sellers
6 Principles for Success in Your Digital Career
A 3-month plan for adding social to your marketing mix
15 Essential Tips for Harnessing Your Creativity

Do you have another article that became particularly valuable to you lately? What about your blog? What are you writing about? Share it in the comments here.