Measuring Outcomes in B2B Social Media – Part II: A Model

Filed under Discussion, Uncategorized by Aaron Pearson on 17 May 2010 at 06:56 {2 comments}

A few days ago, I blogged about the B2B roundtable we had here at Weber Shandwick Minneapolis, “Social Media and ROI: Dare We Talk About It?” And we did!

In that post, I summarized the first half of our message to attendees, which was that it was not a big deal to ignore ROI in our trial social media efforts of the past year because a small Investment required only a small Return. Now that we want to get serious and scale this, you better believe we need to talk about measuring real business outcomes.

But how do we do this?  A survey of our attendees showed most simply didn’t know where to start. Interestingly, Jim Estell blogs here that you can’t measure ROI for marketing at all, much less for social media, because it’s too complex. I’ll be the first to admit the proof of impact isn’t always definitive but if you’ve done the research to know your audience well, then this is certainly a do-able task in B2B because there is typically a defined purchase process where our efforts can have a clearer impact.

We have a measurement model for communications in general and it works for social media too.  (In other words, if you can measure business outcomes impact for any sort of marketing communications effort, you can certainly do it for social media. ) It’s called ARROW (see our little graphic).

ARROW Model for Communications Measurement

ARROW Model for Communications Measurement

A = Activities. These are the things we generate. In social media land, that includes blog posts, tweets, YouTube videos or simply the number of web properties we are maintaining.  They get at a measurement of effort. On their own, however, they are meaningless.

R1 = Reach. Essentially number of eyeballs of our target audience we are reaching. We may measure this by Twitter followers or Facebook “friends” or blog page views. Important, but are we changing how our target audiences thinks or behaves?

R2 = Relevance. We sometimes use the word Resonance too. We want to measure that a message got through to our audience and that it connected with them. Relevance measurements can include key messages in third-party blog posts or tweets, number of retweets, blog comments, increases in site traffic or click throughs on a corporate blog to resources on your web site. Still not a business outcome.

O = Outcomes. Ideally, this is when our audience enters the sales pipeline in some way by requesting information or registering on your web site (i.e. becomes a lead) or when you sell more stuff, or when the quality of your leads improve or when your sales cycle shortens.

W = Any of the measures above divided by cost.

Ultimately, the goal is to find a corrolation between reach/relevance measurements and business outcome measurements. We are looking at evidence that the reach and relevance measures are in fact creating a better environment in which to sell. Don’t stop at measuring ARR!

If, despite a significant investment in marketing communications or social media efforts, no corrolation can be found, then you are right to question whether your dollars are being put to good use. What we’re looking for in choosing our reach and relevance measurements is whether or not they are precursors to ROI. How do you know?  Well, you can take the trial and error route to see if there are any corrolations, or better, you can conduct some good audience research before launching a major social media campaign to define what I’m calling the Awareness-to-Advocate Process Path, the average compositive path a prospect takes from awareness of the product category or your brand to being an advocate for your brand. That research significantly helps mitigate your risk of making a big investment in a program that delivers no return.  You still must measure the result to determine the strength of the impact.  More on that in another post!

Measuring Outcomes in B2B Social Media – It’s Time to Start

Filed under Discussion by Aaron Pearson on 10 May 2010 at 00:55 {7 comments}

About quarterly, we host a group of about 15 marketing and communications professionals at our Weber Shandwick Minneapolis office to discuss issues related to B2B digital and social media issues. We held our most recent one a couple weeks ago, “Social Media and ROI: Dare We Talk About It.” Yes, I’m just getting around to blogging about it now, but it’s worth highlighting.

Prior to the roundtable discussion, we asked them all to fill out a short, rather unscientific online survey just to give a sense of where they were at collectively regarding measurement – especially the ROI kind – and social media. Most of them participated.

For the record, the group represented a variety of industries – high-tech, executive education, advertising, healthcare, manufacturing, etc. Most of them are now employing social media of one kind or another – often with blogs or LinkedIn, with Twitter emerging. And the number one challenge they’re having with measurement? Where to start.

Nobody should feel bad about this. For most B2B companies – especially those who don’t use the Web as their primary sales channel (i.e. e-commerce) – the last year or so has been a period of experimentation and cultural adaptation to social media mores. It’s been very much about reassuring senior executives, corporate counsel, IT executives and many others that this transparent, two-way, personal and highly responsive way of communicating with stakeholders need not put brand equity at risk, threaten the company with lawsuits, destroy productivity or endanger intellectual property. Whew, with all that to worry about, it’s tough to focus on what social media CAN do!

So our message to our attendees, and to you, is this:  When you are in test and trial mode, you are generally investing few resources – whether people or hard costs. If there’s insignificant Investment, we don’t need to work very hard to justify Return. But that party is over. The saying goes that you should “measure what you treasure,” and realizing significant results from adding sophisticated digital and social media programs to the communications mix will cost money. It’s not fair to expect the company to just hand it over.

And I wouldn’t be satisfied with the “You don’t ask for ROI on the phone system, do you?” argument. That might fly in boom years, but it’s an invitation to get your budget slashed in a tough one. How many of you were installing sophisticated new phone systems in the last recession? Not many. And we know how damaging it can be to stop a social media program once we start one.

Up Next From Me:  “Getting Started.”  (hint: social media measurement isn’t fundamentally different than measuring outcomes for any other communications program)

The slides from our discussion are posted here.

Meet Your Future B2B Customers

Filed under Discussion, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 3 May 2010 at 15:40 {3 comments}

Last week I read through a recent study by The Kaiser Family Foundation on media habits of 8 to 18-year olds. You can read a great summary of the study over at Wall St. Cheat Sheet.  The study is clearly aimed at parents (me) and how kids are interacting with various media (my kids — all under the age of 8 — clearly prefer the iPhone, Leapster and Internet over TV).  However, there are some very salient points here from a marketing perspective to examine, which I did make and sent to our web, research and product marketing directors.

So let me give you some thoughts on this study and why this matters to B2B communicators. Here are my three key takeaways:

  1. Total consumption of TV is growing, but it’s all growing online — iPod (soon the iPad), Internet and mobile devices. As communicators we need to be able to consider developing the strategy and tactics to reach this audience in the near future. Will you outsource video? Do you bring it in-house and hire a team? How will you share video content or better yet, how will you let others take and share your content?
  2. Nearly 60% of their time on the Internet is spent on social networking sites (25%), playing games (19%) or using instant messenger (13%). This next generation of customers already is well adapted to interacting, sharing and having very active conversations online. They will expect this from you as well so is your business ready to make the shift to having B2B conversations? Is your web site ready for the future?
  3. Reading is on the decline. In fact, the drop in newspaper readership among this age group is enormous — from 42% saying they read a newspaper in 1999 to 24% in 2009. Magazine readership is maybe “less worse” dropping from 55% to 35%. This is yet another indication that we will need to reach future generations by less traditional methods, not through print ad campaigns or media relations.

You can also watch the video “Profiles of Generation M2″ here:

YouTube Preview Image

That’s my perspective, but I’d like to hear from you. What is your organization doing to prepare for your next generation of customers? Was this helpful or is it still too focused on B2C communication?

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