Social network service

May 5, 2009 • 1:56 pm 0

The Value of Social Media for B2B Purchase Decisions

Understanding how customers decide what solutions they need, which services they need, or what vendor to work with seems to move in peaks and valleys. With social media on the scene and companies embracing it to get closer to customers, the question is arising again. The real question is, how does social media contribute to a customer’s purchase decision?

Taking visitors to social media networks or connections to social media marketing efforts into the sales process has thus far eluded marketing. The answer may be in this recent analysis provided by eMarketer.com. While GenY is more optimistic about visitation and use of social media activities by US Professionals, Boomers and GenX think that professionals are less inclined. This is not surprising as other statistics show an age gap. What is important to realize is that Boomers and GenX are typically the ones making the decisions and holding the purse strings. If they aren’t using social media to gather information about solutions, services, and vendors their purchase decision is not going to be influenced by what marketers put there.

Another revealing aspect of this study is the individual vehicles and their place in the typical workday. Social networking, where marketers are looking to develop one-to-one relationships, are not as frequented by decision makers. The other area to connect directly, internet forums, is also a lagging vehicle. On the other hand, traditional vehicles such as a news site and personal email are ingrained in everyday behavior. Social media, as a newer communication and information source, requires change in a decision maker’s behavior. Other tools, such as mobile devices, were readily adopted due to teh fact that they mimicked and incorporated existing communication methods. It wasn’t as much of a leap for people to make. Social media, on the other hand, my be too different from how decision makers gather information or collaborate.

In a world where the journalist is considered a dying breed, across the board responents reconginzed the role they play in a professionals workday. In fact, the gap is significant when compared to blogs. This seems to point to a need to value and validated content versus opinion. Another aspect to consider is that business journals are still able to sell online content and information. Social media in time may become a trusted source of informtion, but today’s the number indicate that decision makers as designated by generation still rely and trust traditional sources. Blogs, forums, and networks may still be seens as commentary and biased even is they are produced in journalistic fashion.

As GenY moves up the ranks and GenX further gravitates to social media int the workplace, things will shift. But, this may still be several years out. As marketers, we need to consider our audience’s preference for communication and information gathering when leveraging marketing tools that should drive sales. Social media in business is still an immature source even as the hype has reached a crescendo. If social media is not used regularly in a workday, it does not have the marketing power to transform engagement into sales. Purchase decisions are complex and content and engagement needs to happen in a manner that creates trust, credibility, and aligns to the customer decision process.

Filed under: b2b, marketing operations, marketing technology, networking, social media, social media marketing , b2b, Business, Business development, business-to-business, decision process, lead generation, marketing, Marketing and Advertising, social media, social media marketing, Social network, Social network service

March 25, 2009 • 1:28 pm 1

B2B Social Media is Not One-Size-Fits-All Part 1

Social media opens up a wide array of possibilities for marketers as well as cost savings. However, how or if it is used for marketing will look entirely different depending on the company, industry, and products and solutions sold. Social media marketing is not “one-size-fits-all”.

The hype of late has really told the story of social media marketing within the consumer arena. The picture is quite different in business-to-business. When Forrester talks about 50% of marketers increasing their spend in social media, take out business-to-consumer and you get a very different perspective. Supporting this, agencies see the big push in social media spending is really still from consumer focused companies.

In a recent Q&A session on LinkedIn, I asked marketers what percentage of marketing spend was for social media marketing and what that number was last year. So, even if everyone said they were increasing spend, this could provide a perspective on how committed they were. One reply provided an article from from eMarketer and included a graphic on social network advertising spend. To my surprise, the biggest increase of spend was not this year (2009) 17% but last year (2008) 46%. No wonder all the hype over the past year.

But, this still doesn’t show what is happening in B2B. That came from responses from marketing and business development. The B2B social media marketing spend answer: no marketing spend. None. Zero. However, that doesn’t mean that no effort is spent on social media marketing. Dani Lee, Director of Marketing at Copanion says, “(This) is partly due to the fact that our B2B SMB target audience has low adoption of social networking. However, from a time perspective, we definitely spend more time on social networking this year compared to almost no time last year. We drive content to our social networking sites with the goal of creating more engagement with our audience over various channels.” Another contributor doesn’t see that social media makes sense in highly complex solution sales.

The big question is, what does social media marketing do for B2B? Or, is there also a factor that social media marketing as it is defined today does not represent B2B marketing perspectives for marketing overall.

Where social media marketing and advertising is focused on the consumer, the engagement is much more relaxed and, well, social. In B2B, there is a lot of vested interest on both sides of the deal. Sending tweets to customers may not be the answer to relationship building. There also may not be an audience to connect to through social networks and communities. B2B is going to have to figure out what the conversation looks like from their perspective and map to social media outlets. It all boils down to conversational preference.

You can watch the Q&A session on LinkedIn by going to http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/internet-marketing/MAR_ADP_INM/443710-575533?searchIdx=0&sik=1237987444226&goback=%2Easr_1_1237987444226

Also, if you would like to participate in a survey on budget and resource allocation, you can go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=9ccwmeJJoa_2f_2fcSl_2bwgr_2fDA_3d_3d

Part 2

Related Articles:

You Don’t Have to Get Social Media, You’re Doing It

Conversational Preference in B2B Social Media

Filed under: b2b, customer relationship, marketing technology, networking, sales 2.0, social media , b2b, busines-to-business, Business, Forrester Research, Internet marketing, LinkedIn, marketing, Marketing and Advertising, marketing budget, marketing resources, social media, social media resources, Social network service, social networking

March 19, 2009 • 1:57 pm 1

You Don’t Have to Get Social Media, You’re Doing It

My 9 year old daughter watches as I write blogs, check my stats, and ponder what others are saying and doing. While writing this morning, she is peaking over my shoulder and says, “I really don’t get social media.” I had to laugh because she is immersed in social media.

She doesn’t think about what she is doing as new, different, or leading. She blogs to tell friends and family what she is up to. She is obsessed with Webkinz and all the things she can do in Webkinz World (I recently found out she has a boyfriend there, YIKES!). She is plugged in to her Ninetendo DS and sits with friends connecting through a game. Her goal is to get a cell phone when she turns 10 so that she can text with friends – we’ll see. She doesn’t have to get it. She just does it.

You may think that as B2B marketers and salespeople you are lagging behind your B2C brethren. I think that is wrong. The foundations of social networking and communities already exist within your websites, trade associations, and professional associations. You have a captive media audience with your analysts. You also have existing media assets that you determined work. And, believe it of not, you are already doing it.

Here’s an example of social media in action during 2001. I worked for a computer software company that had it’s own solutions as well as a large partner network. The dot com bubble burst and our event budget was significantly scaled back. However, we still wanted to have interaction with customers as well as fulfill our partnership obligations through joint marketing and sales efforts. Our solution was to combine webinar, conferencing, and forum capabilities to create a virtual conference. The virtual conference mimicked live conferences with tracks, product showcasing, break-out sessions, as well as pre-scheduled customer meetings for demos and solution discussions. We promoted it the way we would our other conferences, but there was no charge for the event. The event was highly successful both in attendance, interaction, and initiating or closing business even as the technology platforms were in an early stages of capabilities and usage.

A hidden benefit to the virtual conference was we now had an extensive asset library. Webinars, flash demos, white papers, and forums that could be converted to FAQs as well as kept open for further community building and interaction. It also pushed us to test new technologies and work out some of the kinks before applying them within our overal website.

If you think about it, social media is really just a virtualized society. It makes it faster, easier, and at times cheaper to connect with others that have simliar interests or commonalities. The tools today, as opposed to 2001, are more intuitive and flexible making it faster and easier to get started. So, the real effort is taking what you have in your assets, look at how you interact both online and offline, and recreate that in social media.

Additionally, you will need to evaluate how the conversation is different in a face to face setting vs. the content push that primarily happens today with direct marketing efforts. What works with events and meetings is dialogue exchange. Our websites and marketing as a whole have become more of a linear mechanism to bring people into the lead management process. The social setting is about exchange. I heard one person say that social media is really a vortex – kenetic, circling, accelerating to a mutual objective.

Don’t believe that you are behind in your ability to implement an effective social media strategy. It doesn’t matter if you “don’t get it”. In many ways, you are already doing it. Now there is a lexicon for it.

Filed under: b2b, marketing technology, networking, sales 2.0, social media , b2b, Business, business-to-business, forums, marketing, Online and offline, social media, social media marketing, Social network, Social network service, virtual conferences, virtual events, web, webinars

February 24, 2009 • 6:09 pm 0

Go Mobile – B2B Sales Social Network

As marketing is trying to figure out how to leverage the current “it” technology of social media, where is sales in all this? Quite possibly still trying to figure out how to generate enough business and maintain rockstar status to avoid the last technology they were forced to use – CRM/SFA. Let’s face it, CRM/SFA at the end of the day probably benefits marketing and management more than it does sales.

When talking about social media, it is really less about the technology and more about new and better ways to connect to customers in a one to one manners. This is what sales is all about. Add to the fact that social media is also highly portable through mobile devices and you have a tool for sales that aligns nicely to what sales wants, better engagement with customers. While it may be tempting and on the surface seem easier to integrate into existing web and business applications utilizing laptops as clients, sales is not about the laptop. Sales is about its mobile phone.

Why go mobile media with sales:

The app is on the device sales uses most
Mobile apps are simple to understand, simple to use, and simple and fast to set up
The app is within touch of how sales interacts with the customer
Mobile apps already exist to mash into mobile network, CRM/SFA apps within the enterprise
Always “on” connection – wifi or mobile network

Getting sales to leverage social media is probably not going to be as much of an issue as it is adopting the mechanisms to do so. Social networking is ultimately what sales does. Simplicity is really the key. I’ve worked with and know some extremely savvy and business oriented sales people that are the best because they are a consultant first, sales person second. A good number of these friends and colleagues sell some of the most complex technology solutions out there. Yet, when it comes to using anything more difficult than their Blackberry for a phone call or email, forget it. If they can’t figure it out without using a manual, using it is never going to happen – unless under threat of docked commission. It is no wonder The Sales 2.0 Network says that sales is still in the technological dark ages.

Providing usable tools that fit neatly into a sales persons favorite tool, their mobile phone, makes things familiar and accessible. Today’s social media tools are simple to use, easy to understand, and ready to use in seconds. Having these tools connected to account profiles, contacts, service records, transactions, and marketing content provides a mechanism for a more robust engagement with customers. Social media becomes an extension of the consultative process.

Preassure on Enterprise Apps

Companies like Oracle, SAP, even Salesforce.com are on the hook to leverage mobile apps that integrate with CRM/SFA systems with simplistic interfaces that we have today. Mobile technology with these enterprise applications is there, but needs to be mashed with social media apps and networks bringing sales closer to the customer. Focusing requirement gathering efforts in marketing may seem the right path at first, but it is sales that actually could prove the wiser point of entry. Marketing may be driving the need for social media integration but, leveraging sales leadership for insight into their relationship practices might yield better results for B2B organizations using social media. After all, who is already networking and how similar is that to what social media and networks is all about.

Potential Cost Savings

Yet, even without tight integration with existing enterprise applications, today’s social media apps are already a powerful mechanism. On top of that, there is a low or no cost of entry for companies. Pilot programs to deploy these social media apps can act as the foundation to gather requirements for more robust and mature platforms. In the process, marketing is also learning from these social media interactions to improve its own use. It may even be cheaper having sales go mobile on social media than spending marketing dollars and also seeing ROI.

Filed under: b2b, networking, social media , applications, b2b, blackberry, crm, iPhone, marketing, Mobile, mobile applications, mobile media, Mobile phone, mobile phones, roi, sfa, social media, social media sales, Social network, Social network service, social sales

February 17, 2009 • 8:29 am 3

Latin America Poised for Social Media Explosion

Mobile devices are clearly a key component of social media. So, to understand the trend and opportunity it pays to look at what mobile and network vendors are thinking. According to a recent study, Cisco believes that mobile video will grow at a CAGR of 150% between 2008 and 2013 outpacing overall mobile traffic (131% CAGR in the same period). Leading the way in growth, Latin America.

Findings from the Cisco VNI Mobile Forecast:

Global mobile traffic will exceed two exabytes per month by 2013.

Global mobile data traffic reached one exabyte per month in half the time that fixed data traffic did.

Nearly 64 percent of the world’s mobile traffic will be video by 2013.

Mobile video will grow at a CAGR of 150 percent between 2008 and 2013.

Mobile broadband handsets with higher than 3G speeds and laptop air or data cards will constitute more than 80 percent of global mobile traffic by 2013.

Latin America will have the strongest mobile growth at 166 percent CAGR, followed by the Asia-Pacific region at 146 percent.

Asia-Pacific will account for one-third of all mobile data traffic by 2013.

*An exabyte is equal to: 1 billion gigabytes; 1,000 petabytes; 250 million DVDs

While the smallest market except for Central/Eastern Europe, it shows the impact video will have as Latin America develops further. If you consider how mobile video has been an indicator of social media adoption, this is important.

Another player poised in this market is Microsoft. In a recently announced partnership with Telefónica, Microsoft will offer its Windows Live Services expanding its reach across 12 countries further penetrating Argentina and Chili. Through a partnership with Vivo, Microsoft already has reach within Brazil.

Lastly, Opera released its mobile report in August highlighting Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela as the large consumers of mobile web usage.

Select highlights for Latin America:

Brazil leads the way in mobile Web usage in Latin America, followed closely by Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina.
Orkut, metroFLOG and hi5 are the most prevalent social-networking sites in Latin America, although Facebook is the fourth-most-popular site in Venezuela.
Local domains are few and far between in the top 10. Brazil leads all Latin American countries with two, while most have one or no local domains in the top 10.

Opera also shows a significant rise in social network participation.

So how big is this? Consider that an ITU census of mobile lines in Latin America is 388 million.

This looks like a perfect storm and opportunity for marketers looking to reach customers in Latin America. Similar to other emerging markets, mobile devices may be the key to connect.

Filed under: marketing technology, networking, social media , cisco, latam, Latin America, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, mobile media, mobile usage, mobile video, Mobile Web, opera, social media, Social network, Social network service, social web, Telefónica

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