Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Archives for April 2010

Putting Hard Numbers to the Value of Social Media Connections

computer_hand_moneyThe company that develops an accurate way to measure the value of social Web connections would etch its place in marketing history, but is it really possible to put hard numbers to the value of social Web connections and conversations?  One company, Vitrue, is trying to do exactly that and with new research reveals that one million social Web connections translates into $3.6 million in media over the course of a year.

According to an article on BrandWeek, Vitrue developed its valuations by researching Facebook impressions and updates and discovered that connected people deliver more impressions overall.  That means, if you have an audience on the social Web, you should actively interact with them.  They are listening to you.

Vitrue is quick to point out that not all brands are created equal on the social Web.  “Sexier” brands have more engaged audiences and get more impressions than less exciting brands.  It’s all about perception though.  How can you make your brand more like the brands that are having success in engaging their audiences on the social Web?  That’s just one opportunity for you to find added success in your own social media marketing efforts.

Vitrue’s research also didn’t analyze the value of the engagements and relationships that develop between brands and the people who connect with them on the social Web — just the variance in brand impressions that those connections experience was analyzed.  Clearly, the more interactive and engaged the audience is and the deeper relationships grow, the greater the value of those connections.  That means the $3.6 million value is probably much higher.  However, like measuring brand value, measuring the value of social media connections still alludes companies.  The point to take away from this research is that social Web connections do impact brands in the long-term and social media marketing should be an integral part of any marketing plan.

Image: Flickr

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 15: Blogs

For the most part, corporate investor relations sites have stayed away from social media in all of its forms. There are a variety of reasons for this, ranging from overly protective attorneys to lack of resources, but at the very least I think that blogs should be considered as a way to make your IR site more effective and interesting. Twitter might be an application too far, but a blog is very much something that can be useful in telling the company’s story in plain English.

There are very few companies that have investor relations blogs. In fact, I know of only one: Dell. They use it for a variety of purposes, ranging from interviews to discussion of business lines and telling people what the IR department is up to. I’ve included a screenshot below.

Dell IR blog

When you think of the number of repetitive questions a typical investor relations officer answers in the course of a year, it would make sense for IR departments to write out the answers and post them on the blog. That way, rather than answering the same question for the thirtieth time while going brain dead, an investor relations officer can point people to the blog for the complete answer. Further, if you take the time to sit down and write out your answer, everyone will get the same information. My experience in this area is that in new situations, the quality of the answer an investor gets is principally the function of two factors: When they ask the question and the completeness of the questions they ask. If an analyst is too early in the question queue, many times the answer has not been fully formulated by the IR practitioner and valuable information may be left out. Secondly, if the analyst is not an astute enough questioner, valuable information may also be left out as many IR officers only answer the questions asked, figuring that it is not their job to school the analyst. The result is an inconsistent spread of information. The act of writing out the answer forces a more complete answer to be formulated.

Over the course of many years the amount of plain English text investors receive about their investments has steadily declined. In the U. S., most annual reports today are what are known as 10-K wraps, with no more than 12 pages of free form textual discussion about the company. Shareholder newsletters are few and far between and quarterly reports have disappeared entirely. Why not use the relatively costless printing press of the web to deliver more information about your company in a reader friendly format such as a blog?

In this series:
Previous post: Engaging the Individual Investor
Next post: Visibility

Hiring is Hard Work

“In a perfect world, you would take pride in the fact that you hired someone who is better than you. Hardly anybody has that attitude, though.”

That’s a quote from noted entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki, who talked about hiring in an interview for The New York Times “Corner Office” series.  His contention:  A players hire A+ players, while B players hire C players.  The best people are self-confident, while lesser people “hire down” to ensure they will look better than their employees.

Kawasaki also notes that people tend to see their own specialty as extremely difficult, but suppose that all the other jobs are really easy.  So engineers may demand brilliance from engineers, but at the same time may not think it matters much who’s in charge of marketing or finance.

It’s hard to combat those tendencies in persons, but at least you can take a look to see if there’s a lack of balance in job descriptions.  For example, someone may put a lot of thought and detail into the description for a job they see as important, while barely sketching a job they don’t think of as difficult.  Similarly, a B player might downgrade education qualifications and experience if they are looking for a non-threatening hire.

It would also be worthwhile to review the Careers site with the same aim in mind.  Are all positions at all levels treated fully and fairly?  Are all career paths, departments, and product lines accorded equal treatment?

Another important aspect of the hiring process is highlighted in the Recruiter Daily article Make Better Candidate Recommendations.  Recruitment trainer Ross Clennet favors behavior-based, structured interviewing techniques, and contends that recruiters should be able to offer specific , fact-supported assessments rather than impressions drawn from unstructured conversations.

In case “behavior-based interviewing” doesn’t ring a bell, there’s a nice summary at About.com’s Job Searching portal.  Short version:  It’s an approach that focuses on questions about “how the interviewee acted in specific employment-related situations,” and it’s based on the idea that “how you behaved in the past will predict how you will behave in the future.”  Example questions might include “Can you tell me about a time when you used logic to solve a problem,” and “Describe a situation in which you had to implement an unpopular decision.”

This method has passionate supporters and detractors.  Many interviewers use a combination of structured and unstructured questions, combining specific information with intuition.  But in terms of relevance for the corporate Careers site—information about steps in the hiring process and tips on interviewing make excellent website features.  Not only will the online info help candidates, the company is likely to benefit from clarifying its hiring approach.

Design as a Catalyst for Brand-Building

A recent article about Procter & Gamble published by Advertising Age, tells the story of the company’s new focus on design as a catalyst for shaping marketing strategy and building consumer products brands.  The new design focus seamlessly integrates product, package and marketing for a stronger presence at the store-level rather than relying on a silo approach that was no longer working.

P&G invested time and money into research, design, and execution to revive many of its brands, and the results so far have been very positive.  The company’s new direction requires that every marketing idea can prove its potential for success at the shelf-level before it is pursued.

It’s a bold shift in thinking that feeds off of 2009 research by Nielsen Co., which reported that half of respondents (who came from six developed markets, including the United States) to the Nielsen survey claimed that they learned about new products in-store while just one-third reported television as the place where they learn about new products.  Furthermore, 71% of the consumers who reported that they learn about new products primarily in-store cited seeing a product on the store shelf and its package as the source of their awareness.  According to these results, in-store promotional displays have clearly been trumped by package design.

Many of P&G’s new design efforts haven’t launched at the store level yet, so results are forthcoming.  However, the company can cite a 2-point market share increase for one of its brands since implementing a redesign effort for it.

shampoo_store

Overall, P&G’s efforts sound positive, primarily because they’re attempting to listen to consumers throughout the redesign process to learn what consumers truly need and want from P&G products and brands.  We’ve all been to the supermarket and stood in front of shelves and shelves filled with shampoo trying to find the brand we prefer.  And once you find your brand, you need to carefully read each label to ensure you select the formula or scent that you like.  P&G is finally accepting that shelf clutter isn’t boosting sales and market share.  For example, the company is redesigning its Pantene hair care product line by cutting 25% of the items in the line and adding an easier to read color-coding design to its packages to help consumers find the specific item they want faster and with less frustration.

When was the last time your marketing team took a look at your package design and evaluated its real performance on the shelf?  Are you sure your design is working?  Consumers’ tastes, needs, and wants change faster than ever these days.  Brands need to not only keep up with those changes but also to seek out every possible way to gain even the slightest advantage over the competition.  Packaging and design just might be the catalyst for your own brand building efforts.

Image: Flickr

Corporate Social Media Relations Challenges

Corporations face many of the same challenges as any other business. They too have issues in human resources, finance, management, administration, marketing, etc. There are often entire departments dedicated within these groups to deal with issues that arise. There may be “think teams” assembled to tackle the challenges that corporations face and to come up with a resolution to the problems.

The Internet Factor

With the popularity of the internet, there is a new challenge that corporations may also face. This challenge is in the area of social media and/or media relations and finding the cohesion with their corporate structure. The internet is a wonderful tool, but it can also be an overwhelming resource for corporations who may not be ready to face the issues that it presents.

For instance, corporations have sales teams that pitch and deliver their product or service to potential clients. Issues often arise in sales that may require the salesperson to visit the client. There may be a need to replace a product or to assess the level of customer service and quality on their account. These things can often be remedied with a person-to-person sales call or manager’s meeting. However, if the corporation is also doing business online, how does the salesperson make the uneasy online client feel confident in their buying choice? How can they smooth over a client who has received the wrong product, or worse, been over-billed for a service?

What can an online corporate structure do  to meet the challenges that technology presents? While there are no hard rules to resolutions to corporate issues, there are a few guidelines that may work. They may not fit every situation or every corporation, but they can be applied to most any online situation.

Find the social media outlets that work

Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or your in-house marketing team, find a social presence that matches your company’s personality. This is important in establishing yourself as a viable online presence and finding the customers for your product or service. All social media outlets work on the same premise but in different ways. Do you want to share photos? Share news stories? Interact with customers? Determine the outlet that best fits the corporation’s persona and maximize its usage.

Set measurable goals

It’s arguable that it’s hard to measure productivity through media relations efforts. How do you know if people are responding to your pitch or if they were just in the right place at the right time? Instead of looking for determinable milestones, measure goals internally. For instance, set goals to establish and grow your customer forum for feedback. You can gauge satisfaction results from the forum as well as tweak areas of needed improvement based on the client’s interaction and feedback.

Create trust

Nothing creates trust more than consistency. It is important to be consistent in all things related to social media relations and your target market. Especially when it comes to online functions, it is imperative to create a trusting relationship that your readers can depend on. Keep a consistent schedule of posts, e-newsletters and regular announcement. Readers and customers learn to trust you when they see that you are consistent in keeping your word in all facets of your marketing efforts.

Another important consideration would be to target those who are the decision-makers or the influential leaders. This may not necessarily be someone who is directly involved in media production, but someone who has the authority to make decisions. It may be difficult to find who your key contact is, but make diligent efforts to do so and communicate with them as much as possible without being overbearing.

What are some challenging social media issues that you’ve experienced in your corporate culture? What steps,if any, have you taken to remedy the situation?

9 out of 10 Consumers Agree – Store Brands and National Brands are Equal

generic_spamA new study conducted by Ipsos Marketing in 23 countries reveals that nearly 9 out of 10 respondents (89%) believe that store brands are as good or better than national brands in terms of providing a good value for the money.  These new results support 2009 statistics that reported an impressive growth in private label brands as well as a 2009 report by Nielsen that predicted store brands would dominate consumer purchase trends in 2010.

A few more interesting statistics from the new study are:

  • 87% believe that store brands are equal or better than national brands in terms of “offering products that meet my needs.”
  • 86% claim that store brands are equal or better than national brands in terms of “offering products that are good for the family.”
  • 81% stated that store brands are equal or better than national brands in terms of “offering food products that taste good”  and “offering home products that work well.”
  • 80% said that store brands are equal or better than national brands in terms of “offering products I trust.”
  • 73% reported that store brands are equal or better than national brands in terms of “offering high-quality products.”
  • 69% claimed that store brands are equal or better than national brands in terms of “offering innovative products.”
  • 65% believe that store brands are equal or better than national brands in terms of “having appealing packaging.”

The question is whether or not national brands should be concerned.  There was a time when national brands felt little or no competitive threat from store brands, but today, store brands cannot be ignored.  They’re growing as more people try them in response to economic problems and a desire to save money, but they’re also growing as more people talk about them.  The word-of-mouth marketing for store brands is strong as consumers are happy to tell friends and family about the less expensive but equally good in terms of quality store brand product they discovered.

National brands need to develop strategies and tactics to not just react to growing store brands but also to proactively protect their market share.  It’s not a matter of if store brands will steal market share from national brands but when, and chances are, it’s going to happen sooner rather than later.

Image: Flickr