There is a lot of discussion around the ROI of social media marketing and how to measure it. This presentation, made at Internet World on 11 May 2011 and the Oxfordshire Social Media Seminar on 12 May 2011, looks at an evolving model for measuring social communications in terms of how it impacts human behaviour and the decision making process.
Internet World 2011 & Oxfordshire Social Media Seminar Social Media Strategy Presentation
1. Influencing the Buying Process through Social Media Marketing Paul Sutton Head of Social Communications Twitter: @ThePaulSutton Web: www.thesocialweb.co.uk
4. 78% www.bottlepr.co.uk the number of consumers who rely on recommendations before making purchasing decisions (source: Syncapse) the number of internet users who conduct product research online (source: Hubspot) 84% @ThePaulSutton www.thesocialweb.co.uk
6. the number of Fortune 100 websites that have had negative growth over the past 12 months (source: Webtrends) www.bottlepr.co.uk 68% 24% the average decrease in visitors on those sites (source: Webtrends) @ThePaulSutton www.thesocialweb.co.uk
7. of social-media active consumers have a disproportionately high impact on purchasing decisions (source: Syncapse) www.bottlepr.co.uk 14% @ThePaulSutton www.thesocialweb.co.uk
9. Extended process due to information available on the social web @ThePaulSutton www.thesocialweb.co.uk www.bottlepr.co.uk
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15. Drive brand awareness via non-sales led creative initiatives that build affinity Feed positive product/service information into the social web to inform consumers during research Utilise brand advocates to influence opinions and make recommendations Provide effective and efficient customer support and service Monitor brand/product mentions, utilise positive mentions and address negative mentions Summary @ThePaulSutton www.thesocialweb.co.uk www.bottlepr.co.uk
16. www.bottlepr.co.uk @ThePaulSutton www.thesocialweb.co.uk If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no-one around to hear it, does it make a sound? YES! AND IT’S LOUD! www.bottlepr.co.uk @ThePaulSutton www.thesocialweb.co.uk
17. Summary The social web is word of mouth on a huge scale If we understand the psychology of the buying process, we can use social media to take advantage of that www.bottlepr.co.uk @ThePaulSutton www.thesocialweb.co.uk
Notas del editor
Social metrics are ‘soft’ metrics, things like follower numbers, retweets, impressions, subscribers, shares and comments. I use them visibly on this blog in the form of the tweet, recommend and share buttons. Business metrics are altogether harder, looking at website visits and source data, URL click-thros, conversion rates and average spend; they're about sales and the bottom line. That’s your Google or website analytics data. They’re all intertwined, as one set doesn’t mean much without the other in social media evaluation terms. And yet neither sphere adequately demonstrates what’s really going on and, in my opinion, that’s why there’s so much hullabaloo about social media ROI. But we’re forced to measure because we want to prove ROI
the reason we're all so set on measuring social media is because business makes it necessary: someone has to pay for us to do it. we want to prove ROI in a statistical sense. numbers fit into the management paradigm, and so we end up taking ambiguous online conversations and trying to turn them into neat metrics to take to the boardroom. But this is like the early days of the internet when we were forced to measure largely irrelevant website metrics. A lot of the metrics that are used are misleading. And that’s because the impact of social media is on human behaviour, and that’s very hard to quantify.
People’s behaviour is changing – they’re reading blogs and forums etc. How to you quantify people researching a product online; reading a review on amazon, reading a forum or a blog, seeing a tweet, asking their Facebook friends? How to do you measure the impact of this social ‘word of mouth’ or what role a facebook page or a twitter profile plays in that? CAN you measure it in a statistical sense? I’d argue that the focus should be more on impacting the buying process in as many places as possible and understanding the psychology of that.
How does this changing behaviour affect the decision making process? Going back a few years, if I wanted a new TV I’d see ads, read a few reports and make a decision based on that information. Nowadays, however, if I want a new TV I’ll Google for suggestions, ask my networks on Twitter or Facebook for recommendations, read online product reviews, research websites, go back to my networks for opinions on my shortlist and only then, once I’ve chosen a product, will I research the best price I can find.
You want proof that this is happening. Major websites’ traffic is shrinking. People are spending all of their time on social media sites and that’s where you hav top influence them.
The key to effecyive social comms is to tap into the people who’s behaviour has changed the most; the 1 in 7 people who use facebook, blogs, twitter, review sites and live a lot of their life online. They are the key influencersm, known as Producers. They comment a lot on facebook, tweet regualrly , have an active blog etc
The is the buying process as it now stands. 5 step model.