SO MO LO - The Confluence Of Social, Mobile & Local Marketing

Beacons Redux? Not Even Close.

As you may recall back in November, 2007, Facebook suffered a humiliating defeat of their Beacon product that promised (at the time) to bring true personalization to the Internet.  The anger of privacy advocates and a botched rollout spelled the demise of Beacon.  Good riddance was my reaction.

 

Now Facebook has come out forcefully with their snappy new Beacon alternative called Open Graph.  This time, they’re playing in a different league that comes with nearly 500 million users compared to a paltry 50 million in the Beacon days.  It also comes at a time when consumers and marketers have realized that social networking is a powerful tool to find and connect with friends and share content while marketers are able to engage with a targeted audience and drive brand strategies. 

 

We’ve tasted the promise of social networking to support distributed brand experiences.  Now we look to the definitive leader in this space to take us to the next phase.  Hype aside, it looks like Facebook has actually gotten it right this time.

 

Cynics would argue that Open Graph is taking the distributed brand experience model in the opposite direction.   Compiling likes and interests on Facebook so as to deliver hyper targeted advertising, fueling their ambitions to achieve higher valuations that Google, seems more like consolidation and power grabbing.  They’d also argue that there’s really nothing Open about Open Graph given it’s proprietary to Facebook.

 

They’d be right on both counts.  While building a treasure trove of data that Facebook uses to their advantage is clearly an outcome of Open Graph, the important point for marketers is how they’ll get there from here.  Enabling brands to drop “like” buttons throughout their web properties and their digital ecosystems will create a two-way stream of user interaction that is unparalleled…and highly valuable for marketers.

 

The first benefit is for those brands that are struggling to carve into the 500 million Facebook member base and create a meaningful social networking presence.  Open Graph provides an instant path to achieve higher awareness with the Facebook audience, increase your fan base and ultimately have a vibrant new engagement channel.  Brands will also quickly benefit from all other "like" votes, delivering targeted site merchandising opportunities for new site visitors that would take weeks - if ever - to build.

 

Other benefits include more efficient acquisition marketing.  "Likes" are posted on walls and are seen by the site visitors social graph, many of whom are either unfamiliar with your brand or have never shopped/purchased from you before. Targeting banners within Facebook using Engagement Ads is icing on the cake, and will challenge behavioral targeting firms to maintain their current slice of ad budgets.

 

Finally, Open Graph can be deployed in the shopping cart, surrounding your purchase path with streams from people with similar product interests.  This content can only reinforce purchase decisions, reduce cart abandonment rates and increase conversions.

 

The ultimate question is whether now is the time to dive head first into social networking.  A brand with a small fan base and little experience with social networking may find this approach too abrupt.  They’d argue for a slower path to getting their feet wet before placing 'like' buttons indiscriminately throughout their digital ecosystem.  Other brands that have seen the power of social networking will move quickly to embrace Open Graph.

 

For those who want to go slow, an effective approach would be to go deep with part of your ecosystem or part of your content/product catalog.  Put the pilot together with measurable objectives and launch in market as soon as possible.  Measure results and expand aggressively…presuming the results of the pilot are positive.

 

One final note.  As multi channel marketers continue to pour resources into digital channels, care should be taken to integrate Open Graph as yet another part of your digital ecosystem.  Consistent brand experiences that are coordinated and targeted should be a fundamental outcome of any Open Graph deployment strategy.

The Futile Debate Between Email and Social

Much has been made about the demise of email and the meteoric rise of social networks and mobile as the preferred method of communication.  To be sure, the facts point to an unmistakable trend – both the number of global email users and the global minutes spent per month on email has been surpassed by social networking. 

 

But when inspected closely, these numbers conceal the value of either channel and, more importantly, the combined value of both channels.

 

Consider the challenges a Chief Marketing Officer is facing today as they seek to bolster their brand, drive awareness, increase marketing productivity and drive incremental revenue – all while demonstrating a positive ROI.  They’re looking at continued media fragmentation in traditional media and attempting to absorb the dizzying pace of changes in digital media.  They’ve begun to build a customer asset that shows promise and are investing in technologies to manage customer interactions.  In short, they’re refining their channel strategy to expand into customer marketing and emerging media.   Pilots and other experiments are prevalent as marketers get a handle on how best to use social and mobile.

 

What marketers are learning is that no single channel will solve their challenges. That’s where the discussion of social v. email becomes unproductive.  The role of either channel is unique and “personal” depending on the individual and what they're trying to do.

 

The key difference between email and social is the promise and opportunity to use social in ways we’re just beginning to understand and exploit.  A promotional message sent to your customer base via email may have greater impact as that same promotional message sent to your Twitter followers and Facebook fans.  The difference in productivity is often how well you know your audience, how well you target and how well you imbue this message with viral qualities.

 

But today, the reality for most marketers is social and mobile are not yet at scale.  Email databases, having been built over the past several years, are many times the size of SMS databases, Facebook fans or Twitter followers.  This will begin to change as brands master the art of building fans and followers – but for now, reaching a large audience is often the domain of email.

 

The biggest issue this whole debate highlights for marketers is how multiple channels are used by consumers today.  This trend will only intensify as marketers harness the power of social and mobile to manage their distributed brand experiences.  Marketers must listen to your customers and allow them to interact with your brand in a manner that is relevant to the customer.  Suggesting that all consumers – or even the majority of consumers – prefer one channel over another is too simplistic. 

 

They use all available channels interchangeably depending on their needs at that time.  They’ll receive an email with a particular offer followed by an SMS message two days later with a more enticing offer.  They’ll respond to the SMS message and shop on a mobile optimized web site that serves up a product demonstration video.  They’ll save their cart and move to their desktop two days later to complete the purchase.  Then they’ll send a Tweet about the deal they got that is linked to their Facebook account.

 

So rather than argue over the preference of email v social, we should spend our energy understanding the unique role of each channel in our channel strategy.  We should realize that email is good for some people serving some of their needs.  We should understand that social is better for other people as they interact with brands.  Making resource decisions based on aggregate data should be avoided.  Rather, drive your channel decisions based on your customer, their needs and their preferences.  The results will be dramatic.

Apps v. Desktop Internet - Who Really Cares?

The debate has started.  Will apps on iPhone, Droid devices and iPads supplant the desktop Internet?  Will Google search be completely transformed ("Search is not where it's at" - Steve Jobs asserts in a recent NYTimes article) and will Flash become irrelevant because it’s “too buggy”?

 

Make no mistake – the arrival of the iPad and the continued growth of mobile is sending shock waves through the industry.  Brands large and small are quickly defining and launching their mobile strategy across the five mobile pillars - Mobile Web, Apps, SMS, Social and mobile advertising.  Often, they’re doing so without clear integration points with their existing channel strategy save for consistency in brand look and feel.  The urgency of the situation requires cutting corners – for now.

 

But to pit one mode of Internet access against another misses the point.  There’s no clear line of demarcation between desktop and mobile internet…and that IS the point.  Seamless brand experiences that traverse mobile, social, and desktop while reaching into other places where brands exist – like packaging and print ads that direct shoppers to product-specific URL’s using QR technology – is the future of digital brand development.  Using the power of social media to tap into social graphs and fuel word of mouth further bolsters this point.  The Internet is everywhere, touching nearly every aspect of our lives.

 

So rather than debate which platform will prevail, brands should worry more about how they’re using all these platforms in a seamless and transparent brand experience.  Rather than devote all your resources to ensure your Web site is superior to your peer group, brands need to move from experimentation with social and mobile to a full-on distributed brand presence. 

 

The winners will realize that consumers use multiple, interchangeable ways of engaging with a brand.  They’ll respond to email promotions one day.  The next day, they’ll be walking through the aisle of a Wal-Mart, accessing their mobile device for the latest price comparisons.  Another day, they’ll be thumbing through their favorite magazine and notice a QR code for a product.  They update their Facebook profile, they Tweet about their status, they visit Web sites, they send text messages.   This is the reality of the digital consumer.

 

In order to address this digital consumer, brands need to pivot away from the mentality that all your tools, content and functionality are on a Web site.  Success no longer is measured in visits and conversions to your Web site.  Success is measured by the entirety of your brand interactions across the digital ecosystem.  It’s one giant  engagement funnel supported by several mini-funnels representing your Web site, email channel,  mobile channel, social channel…each with their own unique trait to engage consumers and elegantly move them through a stage of the funnel.  Tracking and optimizing each mini-funnel will make the entire ecosystem more efficient.  Developing your digital channel strategy with this guiding principle will be the fundamental difference between winners and losers.

 

The debate about which mode of accessing the Internet distracts from the real question.  Which brands will embrace all elements of the digital ecosystem and provide an integrated, relevant, personalized brand experience throughout this ecosystem?  It’s a defining moment for many brands as they seek to innovate and tap into the next stage of their growth.  Care to take a bet on who will win?

The iPad - Skating to Where the Puck is Going to Be

People who know me have heard me use a Wayne Gretzky quote to sum up the challenges of solving marketing and business problems with technology.

"I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."

Often, we spend too much time documenting current requirements and building technology solutions for these requirements that we lose sight of where the future is heading.  This is annoying when we have to make adjustments to our technology foundation to adapt to new requirements.  This is disastrous when we box ourselves in to rigid solutions and have to start over.

While I realize no piece of automation is forever, there needs to be more emphasis placed on emerging technologies that can alter how marketers use channels in big ways.  That brings me to the (admittedly over-hyped) debut of the iPad.

What I see is a complex multi-channel marketing environment getting even more complex.  Although the iPad is not yet at critical mass, the likelihood of the iPad introducing a new way of personal computing is hard to deny.  It's taking the personal connection we experience with our iPhone or Android phone to another level altogether.  It's the big P (as in paradigm) shift that actually warrants the use of this phrase - not those incremental changes that are often associated with paradigm shifts.

So now is the time, while you still have time, to get the marketing automation tool chest in order.  If you're tinkering around with CRM solutions that still don't connect channels together, you'd better move quickly.  Worse yet, if you still haven't created your 360-degree view of the customer, you're going to be falling far behind your peer group.

Soon the best direct marketers will see all interactions across all channels as they occur.  They'll use real-time decisioning capabilities to rapidly respond to all the inputs across all these channels.  They'll deliver personalized experiences that recognizes the personal nature of the computing experience.  They'll take the current state-of-the-art mobile optimized content, applications, SMS messages and widgets delivered to Smart Phones and re-define these experiences for iPad and other tablet devices that will be flooding the market.  And they'll do this with a centralized (and highly sophisticated...not today's campaign management tools) set of business rules and data that define right message, right person, right time.

Gretzky's wisdom will define winners and losers.  Skating to where the puck is going to be - rather than declaring victory because your email channel is CRM-enabled - will give marketers huge advantages to efficiently acquire new customers and increase lifetime value of existing customers.