social media

Marketers have long used the famous funnel metaphor to think about touch points: Consumers would start at the wide end of the funnel with many brands in mind and narrow them down to a final choice. Companies have traditionally used paid-media push marketing at a few well-defined points along the funnel to build awareness, drive consideration, and ultimately inspire purchase. But the metaphor fails to capture the shifting nature of consumer engagement.

This is an excerpt taken from the Harvard Business Review Article found here. Please visit the http://hbr.org to read the full article.

Block That Metaphor

One of the biggest questions companies ask themselves before investing in online social marketing revolves around the challenge of evaluating the return on investment (ROI). In general companies have few benchmarks as compared with traditional media to measure the success of these campaigns.

Nevertheless, it is possible to quantify them. Starbucks got one million clients in only one day thanks to a campaign launched in social circles. Read the complete engagement study in PDF here.

Recently, a new study (PDF) was published by Syncapse whose objective was to evaluate the commercial impact of clicking on the Facebook "Like" button. The conclusion is that on average those users that are fans of a company in the most popular social network spend an additional $71.84 on products for which they are fans compared to those who are not fans.

Marketers are expanding their focus to include more ways to digitally and directly reach consumers, so their vendors must follow suit. It’s just smart business.

Nearly every major email service provider has announced social media integration plans in one form or another, and most have selected a mobile partner or are building messaging into their platforms.

In general, and in particular for direct marketers, mobile continues to represent tremendous opportunity. As we’ve seen with these acquisitions, the appetite for social and digital media technologies is growing.

We regularly make the point that marketers should have a multichannel strategy – one that includes email, online, mobile and social media. The more opportunities you have to reach a customer, the more opportunities you have to engage with them.

From Mashable, by Shane Snow.

Social networking has finally become something valuable for brick-and-mortar businesses. Smartphones and location-based social networks allow users to interact, share, meet up, and recommend places based on their physical coordinates. This real-world connection to social media can mean more foot traffic and profits for business owners.

So-called “lo-so” networks like Foursquare, Loopt, and Gowalla enable any business with a physical location to not only communicate with customers online, but actually get more of them to walk in the door — and that’s exciting.

The question any brick-and-mortar business owner should be asking him or herself is no longer “Should I use lo-so networks?” It’s “How do I do it?” The following tips are essential to getting started.

Read the full article.