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.

Finally, a comprehensive B2B social media study

Filed under Discussion, Resources by Allan Schoenberg on 25 March 2010 at 17:13 {10 comments}

I like studies and research. Maybe it’s the inner economist in me who likes to constantly explore behaviors. Maybe it’s because I like to read various points of view. Or maybe it’s just because I’m always curious and trying to learn.

One thing I continue to notice is the lack of B2B research available on social media. That’s why it’s refreshing to read this study from Business.com entitled 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study. Written by Ben Hanna of R.H. Donnelley Interactive , It’s a very comprehensive look at social media from 3,000 North American professionals who are using (or not using) social media and why. You can download your copy here after you register.

The study isn’t breaking news (it was released in November 2009), but it clearly focuses on what I want to know. In fact, here’s a listing directly from the report as to what you will learn:

  • To what social media sites do business people turn when seeking the information they need to do their jobs on a day-to-day basis? And what are they looking for?
  • What do people consider to be the most useful social media resources for business information (and, therefore, the most valuable social media sites on which B2B companies should participate in order to reach their target audience)?
  • What are the most popular types of social media initiatives among B2B companies, and is the impact of these initiatives visible in business results?
  • How do B2B companies judge social media success?

[Source: Business.com’s 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study (http://www.business.com/info/b2b-social-media-benchmark-study)

I won't give away any surprises, but all of us at B2B Voices would be happy to discuss in the comments section your thoughts. In the meantime, you can follow Business.com on Twitter and read their blog here.

Business.coms 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study

Business.com's 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study

More Reasons to Like Posterous, especially in a B2B setting

Filed under Toolbox by Kate Brodock on 11 March 2010 at 18:53 {6 comments}

I recently wrote about using Posterous as a tool for social media marketing, and I wanted to take some time to comment on why it’s a great tool specifically for the B2B space.  Three of the nine reasons I had given really stand out to me:

  1. SEO. Whether you’re a cutting edge research firm that only transacts with other businesses, or you’re in a more traditional industry like manufacturing, there are just plain fewer opportunities to really leverage SEO… people aren’t necessarily searching for you in the ways that B2C organizations get searched on.  The concept of outposts comes into play heavily here, and the simple fact that having more places for people to search for content related to you – and ideally from you – the more opportunities you have to associate that content with your website, and the more qualified traffic you can drive to your site.  You can very appropriately (and deliberately) assign keywords to your content that is directly linked to your website, and thus your company.
  2. Inbound linking. Many B2B companies also don’t have a lot of opportunities for inbound linking, especially in the more traditional industries  or instances when you may be just one piece of a long supply chain.  Inline with SEO opportunities, Posterous allows a pretty easy inbound linking opportunity….and one of high authority.  If you’re on a fledgling website strategy and need to boost that inbound link count quickly and effectively, Posterous is a great way to do that.  Additionally, these types of young or underdeveloped websites may have a low authority, and supplementing that with Posterous inbound links can do a lot for your organic SEO.
  3. That means more thought leadership potential. See, it makes a nice little equation, doesn’t it?  With higher SEO, more content sharing opportunities and more inbound linking, it means all of your valuable content is all pointed back to your brand.  If you’re good at what you do – which you probably are – and you identify effective internal content to share, this could mean the start of some great thought leadership opportunities.  And this is where people in more traditional industries can have a big advantage…. if you’re among the first to start really thinking about this equation, you can make huge and long-lasting strides ahead of competitors who aren’t as “up-to-snuff.”

I also wanted to throw out a technical note on calls-to-action.  Again, in the B2B setting, calls-to-action can be a lot more difficult to achieve.  It’s not like someone wants a new pair of running shoes from you.  By using outside content on Posterous, and providing a link of some sort – preferably in the form of “For more information on X systems….” – you can still drive people to your own products or services related to the content you’re posting.  As long as the content is relevant to your company, this is still a good way to be found by qualified leads.

So, a couple To-dos for B2B Posterous users:

  • If you have a blog, post every post up on Posterous, with a link back to the original.
  • Think about calls-to-action, and make sure that every post has one that brings your products/services to the readers’ attention.  These don’t need to be overt (and really shouldn’t be), but can be very effective.
  • In some of the more traditional industries, it may actually be better to have your call-to-action right at the top.  If someone is searching for “copper tracer wire” and really just wants a quote or a price (which is usually the case with a purchaser behind the desk) and they come to your Posterous page in their search results, make it really easy for them to get that done…. through you. They may not have the patience to read through your entire post….
  • Use outside content, and find a way to incorporate an association to your company.  This is an easy one, as the fundamental goal of content production is to provide valuable information to your audience.

What else have you found helpful about Posterous in the B2B setting?  Are there any other To-Dos you have? Do you have a Case Study you’d like to share with us?

Thinking Beyond Products

Filed under Application, Discussion by Allan Schoenberg on 22 January 2010 at 16:25 {2 comments}

Every now and then I take time to think beyond our product offerings. It’s a nice exercise and usually leads to some unique and creative ways to think about positioning the exchange. One area that we like to pursue and where we have been successful is in the area of technology. I’m sure we’re not alone in this area, but we try to balance talking about technology as well as our people in technology. So what are some areas that go beyond just products in helping to promote your B2B brand? Here are some quick thoughts.

question mark

Technology:

I like talking about technology. I like talking with our technology team. I’m a tech geek like a lot of you. And I do believe that marketing IT matters – I wrote about it here and earlier this year on B2B Voices about the importance of partnership with information security here.

Human Resources:

Have you integrated recruiting into your social media campaigns yet? There are some simple and effective ways to do this, such as starting out with posting exisitng job openings. But you should also think about how to fully leverage LinkedIn for your recruiting efforts. By the way, have you looked at your company’s profile on LinkedIn yet? It may be in need of some help (another easy victory for you with HR).

R&D:

Positioning your research team members can help showcase some of the great minds at work within your company. These are probably the people that already have a blog or read blogs. Getting these people to post on popular blogs about innovation and technology can help position your organization as leader in either very broad or niche topics.

If you need ideas on how you can do this go back and read Aaron Pearson’s post on how to combine tradition and social media in B2B here and Arik Hanson looked at what to do if you hit a social media roadblock here. And of course share your ideas with us on how you look beyond products to promote your company or clients. What are some ideas that have worked? Or failed? And where do you get your inspiration?

Predictions for B2B Social Media Use in 2010

Filed under Discussion by Kate Brodock on 3 January 2010 at 19:33 {4 comments}

As the last in my series of 2010 prediction posts, here are some of my thoughts looking forward to the next year in B2B social media use.

  1. Social media use will grow horizontally in the B2B space. This means there will be a lot more industries that will be represented on social media than there have been thus far.  And we’re talking a lot more industries like cementing or manufacturing.
  2. Because of the horizontal and first-time occurrences mentioned above, it also means there will be some industries that will be under-represented in the social media sphere, but that will develop front runners who will get significant advantages within those respective industries.
  3. While being more accepted, there will be more boundaries placed on how many B2B industries us social media.  There won’t be so much “stuff” to play with because implementers will realize that there are particular tools that are more helpful for B2B purposes, and that there are many tools that just won’t work.
  4. Social media will be used heavily for internal use in the B2B space.
  5. There will be a lot more multimedia uses, specifically video.
  6. As for all social media marketing, it will be a question of how to interact with people rather than simply where.  This goes a long with the idea of strategy trumping tactics, but it really emphasizes putting together a fuller picture of what can be done with social media tools in B2B and applying in a more focused way.

What do you think will happen in the next year?

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Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

Filed under Application, Discussion by Allan Schoenberg on 17 December 2009 at 01:18 {14 comments}

LinkedIn continues to win me over. While the buzz remains focused on Facebook and Twitter, I continue to see improvements with the LinkedIn Platform. Some of the changes in the past year alone have included the addition of applications (e.g. Tripit), better group management functionality, new LinkedIn Blackberry application, and the latest change is the in the look and feel (more like Facebook/Twitter).

linkedin

If you’re in B2B communication and you’re looking for a place to start in social media – or expand – then you need to go back to LinkedIn if you haven’t already. The main reason I like LinkedIn for social media is that it’s very transparent: I know who you are based on your profile and most people have a real photo (not an avatar of screen name). I am also a fan of their group functionality. We use mostly private LinkedIn groups at the exchange as a way to connect users (we become a networker) and as focus groups for topics, issues and news.

Here are some thoughts and ideas about why pursuing LinkedIn groups can be a win for you and your organization.

Privacy– One of the concerns of public streaming networks like FaceBook and LinkedIn to internal and external stakeholders is the issue of privacy. The “private” feature in LinkedIn helps ease those fears since messages can’t be picked up in Google or other search engines. As a side note, one thing we have noticed by keeping our groups private is that the the number of people remains a manageable size and we can control who joins. As these groups grow we likely will look at creating subgroups (another new feature). There are some good ideas on subgroups here via @CherylHarrison.

RSS Feeds — A nice feature is that you can aggregate RSS feeds into your group, which may or may not include feeds from your own company. And you absolutely should include feeds from relevant trade pulications and blogs to drive content without you having to search for it. We mostly use non-CME Group feeds in order to help foster discussions and provide us with more credibility since we bring in outside content.

Discussion– Part of the focus group feature of LinkedIn groups is the discussion section that allows you to have an open forum for whatever you need it. Do you want the group’s feedback on a new product you’ve launched? What about input on how to improve your web site? More important is you should encourage your audience to post topics and then you can take notes, learn and jump in when needed. Just don’t try to manage too much of the conversation or people will stop contributing.

Legal and Investor Relations- My guess is your corporate counsel is not on Twitter. They might be on Facebook. I blogged earlier about investor relations using StockTwits for to reach shareholders, but they likely aren’t there yet. Here is where LinkedIn can be a showcase for your social media efforts. There likely is more of a chance that they are on LinkedIn and you should be get them involved to show what social media can do and win their confidence.

Company Profile- While you’re at it you should take a quick look at your company’s profile on LinkedIn. There is an enormous amount of data people can find on this one page and someone needs to update it and validate it. Since people may want to learn more about your company before joining your group. I suggest you find your company now and make sure it’s accurate. As a bonus your recruiting department will appreciate the update.

This video from Kyle Flaherty is a nice overview on how to set up and start managing a group.

YouTube Preview Image

In addition, Mashable has some good tips here on how to manage your LinkedIn groups. Are you managing groups on LinkedIn now? If so, share some of your best practices with us. What’s worked well? What have you learned? And while you’re at it why don’t you connect to all of us here at B2B Voices on LinkedIn: Kate Brodock, Anna Barcelos, Arik Hanson, Aaron Pearson, Allan Schoenberg.

5 Ways to Combine Traditional & Social Media in B2B

Filed under Discussion, Uncategorized by Aaron Pearson on 3 December 2009 at 13:20 {5 comments}

I continue to be disturbed by the frequency with which social media is treated as this isolated specialty area, with the result inevitably being that social media messaging and strategy is cut-off from other marketing communications programs, leading to redundancy, mixed messages, wasted money and blown opportunities. I can’t speak for consumer products companies but in B2B I can only implore you to never go this route.

Instead, as I’ve preached before, our point of view is that a B2B purchase decision is an “inline” journey – that prospects using a mix of offline and online sources of information and influence to ultimately become a buyer and hopefully an advocate. As University of Pennsylvania sociologist Keith Hampton said in an article about the myth of urban isolation, “Online and offline life are inherently connected.”

handSo here are 5 thought starters on just how to do that:
1. Bring Offline Conversations Online. You’ll get more return on your investment in live gatherings of customers, prospects or influencers if you encourage online conversations to run in parallel. They will help engage people in live attendance more intensively, provide important contextual information (such as online videos or collateral that complement live presentations), and pull in a lot of people who otherwise couldn’t attend.
2. Be an Inline Thought Leader. Most B2B public relations campaigns have a strong thought leadershp component because when you’re making an expensive, complex purchase, you’re more likely to do so with a vendor with demonstrated expertise, not just because they’re running a “buy one, get one free” sale. Make sure your online thought leadership efforts are thematically in sync. One of our consulting firm clients targeting banks did this by complementing news releases and bylined articles (traditional PR tools) with online video interviews of subject matter experts and a Twitter presence that linked to both their own and third-party content that was topically consistent.
3. Activate Your Intelligence Network. Leveraging social media doesn’t just mean trying to connect with current and potential customers. It can also include creating an internal network or a partner network designed to facilitate intelligence gathering about competitors, sales trends or sales and marketing best practices. Tools like Yammer, Delicious, iGoogle and Radian6 can help and even more sophisticated ones are coming onto the market.
4. Ignite Advocates. Word of mouth remains the No. 1 source of influence in B2B, according to most of the research I see from Forrester and others. A lot of that is happening through pretty traditional channels – face-to-face, phone and email mostly. You can arm your advocates for those conversations by sharing information specifically designed to help them tell your story, via Twitter perhaps, or even a password-protected online advocacy toolkit.
5. Work With the Media – and Be the Media. We’re still going to be pitching stories and working with media and bloggers, but we can self-publish good content ourselves too and the evidence is that good content will be embraced even if it comes from a vendor. For example, a vice president at one of my former clients covered their industry trade show with video and regular blog posts, and was included in an industry trade round-up story as one of the individuals “covering” the event. It gave a big boost to his blog traffic. As journalist A.J. Liebling said, “Freedom of the press is guranteed only to those who own one.” Now you can.

Use Storytelling to Draw In Customers

Filed under Uncategorized by Aaron Pearson on 2 October 2009 at 10:18 {no comments}

storytellingI realize that a business purchase is supposed to be a rational decision driven by the need to maximize net present value or achieve a high internal rate of return or return on investment or whatever. Sure, it’s just economics.

It’s not really that simple. For one thing, everyone has their numbers, so as a buyer, what gets my attention? Try telling stories.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist. How exciting do you suppose a lecure from Dr. Taylor would be on the mental and physiological effect of a left hemisphere brain hemorrhage?

You might be surprised. Watch this TED video.

It’s about 15 minutes long and you won’t want to turn it off.

Let’s take a look at why that is. First, it turns out that the subject having the hemorrhage is none other than Dr. Taylor. Our expert is suddenly vulnerable, a regular human being, not just a super-genius scientist, so we can relate to her. There’s very little jargon in her language (“A blood vessel exploded in my brain.”). There’s tension. A life is on the line. There’s even humor. Our hero pulls through and we learn something from the experience. Wow, awesome stuff.

If Dr. Taylor can make neurological disorders come to life for you, surely, surely you can find a way to make your software/business service/manufacturing system compelling.

I spent part of an afternoon this week watching some customer case study videos remarking on how hard it is for us in practice to employ storytelling techniques. Too often the formula is like this: 1. Business challenge. 2. Selected Vendor X for various reasons. 3. Implementation went well. 4. Business benefits.

That’s a very sensible, rational way to make a grounded business argument to invest in your product or service. But it’s dreadfully boring and won’t get anyone’s attention. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:
1. Make a person the hero of your story, not an institution. It’s hard to feel like a multinational corporation is just like you. But that CIO or finance manager or supply chain manager is a human being. He or she has good days and bad days, loves the job sometimes and dreads it at other times. We can empathize.
2. Remember the setting details. It may not seem all that relevant when you’re collecting the information for your story, but noting the little things – like what the weather was like or what they ate for lunch or how people were behaving – can help pull readers into the story.
3. Tell the bad, then the good. You can’t jump right to the glorious solution. You have to make people worried at first that the bad guys might actually win. Just how grim was the situation? Suddenly, your solution looks like a glorious dawn after a horrible night and your audience will find themselves wanting to be a hero just like your customer was.

There’s certainly art to this, not just science, but principles of storytelling have stood the test of time and can be used not just by communications professionals but also by marketing and sales teams. In fact, we’ve trained scores of folks on how to get the most out of storytelling. Give it a try yourself, or give me a buzz if you need help.

Building a Social Media Marketplace in Financial Services

Filed under Uncategorized by Allan Schoenberg on 10 July 2009 at 13:23 {2 comments}

I remember in my days working at Edelman during the ERP heyday that online B2B marketplaces, particularly for manufacturing, were the buzz and actually changed how many companies did business. Last month, I presented at the Ragan Corporate Communications Social Media conference (we also hosted the conference at the exchange) about what we are doing in the financial services industry (you can view my presentation here via Slideshare and a recap from Barbara Rozgonyi here).

In my opinion we are in the midst of developing a new marketplace at the exchange. In the past several years alone we have seen tremendous and rapid change in our industry. As a marketplace founded in 1848 (version 1.0) our model was unchanged for more than 150 years. Buyers and sellers came to our trading floors to hedge their risk and sell their products. They also used the markets to discover what the market would pay for a price. In 2002 that evolved (version 2.0) when the exchange went public (Nasdaq: CME) and we had new audiences to communicate with (investors, analysts) besides our members. When I came to the exchange in 2004 another shift occurred when for the first time ever electronic trading (version 3.0) surpassed floor trading. This shift in trading create even more opportunities for us as we now had customers in more than 85 countries directly connected to CME Group (as opposed to our trading floor). Today, more than 80 percent of our volume is now electronic. If you want to know more about how the exchange operates you can watch the video here.

So where are we now? I believe social media is profoundly changing financial markets once again (version 4.0). Social media, in particular Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, are having profound effects on the way our customers interact, communicate and research what is happening in the economy. If you want a great example of this just go to StockTwits and follow the conversations. We’ll see where all of this takes us but I think social media will continue to create a number of real business opportunities for traders and the financial markets in the coming years.

I’ll be talking more about this idea and concept at Blogwell and Ragan in the coming weeks. So how is social media changing your views about your industry? I welcome your thoughts, ideas and questions.

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