Tag: B2B vs B2C

How Monster’s CMO is Revitalizing the Brand

Posted on by admin

One of the more refreshing trends in marketing is the grand “mea culpa” in which a brand apologizes for past shortcomings and offers a renewed commitment to quality/integrity. Wells Fargo’s recent “re-established in 2018” campaign is one striking example. Another comes from Domino’s a few years back when they admitted their pizza was poor and relaunched with a better tasting product. This approach takes guts but really resonates especially when the pledge to be ‘better” comes with demonstrable actions. Which brings us to this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite in which Jonathan Beamer, CMO of Monster, admits that the online jobs site had “coasted” for a while and explains how they are renewing their commitment to job-seeker success.

What is so interesting in this case is that though Monster had coasted after dominating the job search market for most of the dot-com era, the brand still enjoyed high awareness and what Beamer calls “latent favorability.” Having this strong baseline to build from, Beamer expected that the combination of product improvements and increased advertising would help revitalize the brand. And though Beamer describes Monster’s revitalization as “a work in progress,” the brand is already seeing increases in site traffic and customer activity. Not coincidentally, Monster is back on TV providing further proof that this medium is far from dead as digital pundits declared 10 years ago!

Listen here for inspiration on how you might revitalize your brand. 

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What You’ll Learn

There’s great power behind a brand that people are familiar with and trust

There’s one core truth behind Monster that has allowed their brand to survive across decades, and that is that people are always searching for fulfilling work. Since 1999 Monster has connected people and job opportunities, and Jonathan explains that it’s paying attention to small details that makes Monster stand out from the masses.

He explains the powerful concept of “latent favorability,” when people remember your brand fondly even after having not used the company’s services for a period of time. Monster has values attached to the brand that goes beyond the product it provides, and that’s where the company’s power lies.

These 4 tips will help you refresh a stagnant brand

Jonathan’s marketing team at Monster has been faced with the challenge of refreshing a company message that has existed for nearly 20 years. In his conversation with Drew, Jonathan explains 4 main tips that have helped guide his team through the process of refreshing a stagnant brand. Here they are.

  1. Be the voice of the customer (in Monster’s case, understanding both an employee on the hunt for a new job and a recruiter looking for top talent)
  2. Have a close partnership with the product/service development team
  3. Understand the simple decisions made throughout a customer’s purchase journey
  4. Be consistent with the tools you choose to use

Learn how to track brand awareness for greater marketing success

Having data on your brand, its level of awareness within your target market, and your digital followers is essential, but you have to know how to aggregate and analyze that data. Jonathan explains that you should not get hung up on the questions to ask when conducting brand awareness surveys or sending out evaluation tools. At the end of the day, the tools you use to track brand awareness matter less than the overall feedback it provides to you and your team. Jonathan also recommends that you also utilize your historical data and keep the big picture in mind when doing brand tracking. For even more insights on how to track brand awareness effectively, be sure to listen.

Timeline

  • [0:28] Drew introduces Jonathan to the Renegade Thinkers Unite show
  • [3:38] Jonathan’s Renegade Rapid Fire segment
  • [17:06] The importance of factfullness in the world around you
  • [19:50] What Jonathan’s excited about as the CMO of Monster
  • [24:07] This is what happened when Monster stopped investing in marketing
  • [30:14] Fixing fundamental aspects of the Monster brand
  • [35:37] Keep these ideas in mind when doing brand tracking
  • [40:51] There’s a strong bond between quality products and justifying marketing efforts
  • [43:32] Content is huge in Monster’s marketing strategy
  • [48:15] Jonathan’s top 3 pieces of advice for new CMOs

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Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

What Your User Community Should Look Like

Posted on by Drew Neisser

In the hype that is social media marketing, it is often hard to distinguish between the braggadocio and the brilliant. Communities are launched with great fanfare only to slink away quietly into the burial ground of false promise. So to stumble across a vibrant community— one that predates Facebook and supports a B2B brand— is not just surprising, it is downright awe-inspiring.

Thanks to the support of an enlightened board member in 2003, the SAP Community Network (SCN) was able to overcome internal naysayers, and gradually grow into a 2.5 million-member social business juggernaut. Now heading community operations, Chip Rodgers, who I interviewed in advance of his presentation at the B2B Corporate Social Media Summit, the SCN sets a high standard, revealing these 9 ways to know your community is truly awesome.

1. Adding members is no longer a key performance indicator
Because communities are still considered a luxury by some executives and a risk by many (rightly or wrongly) there is tremendous pressure in the early days to achieve scale. The SAP Community Network crossed this threshold in the last 24 months. Reports Rodgers, “Around the time we got close to 2 million, we stopped emphasizing the growth of the community.”

2. Community engagement is a daily activity
“If you build it, they will come,” is pure fiction when it comes to communities, which is why most wither away. Remarkably, the SCN gets about 1.5 million unique visitors per month and 3,000 to 4,000 posts a day. “Our activity numbers are really strong,” Rodgers explains. “I think that’s something we pride ourselves on as there are other communities that may have more members but feel like ghost towns; we have vibrancy.”

3. The community jumps in to defend the brand
It is inevitable that a brand will come under criticism for one thing or another once it opens up a community. Offers Rodgers, “We see this all the time where somebody says something negative or even a little wacky.” But rather than rushing out a brand response, “what ends up happening is a lot of community members [jump in saying] ‘This is way over the line,’ or ‘Nah that’s not really true.’’”

4. You can drive your own circulation
Building and maintaining a healthy community on the scale of the SCN is expensive so there is unavoidable pressure to demonstrate value to management. Rodgers notes, “One of our KPI’s is driving activity to webinars and that turns into real pipeline opportunity dollars traceable back to activity in the community.” In effect, the community acts like a media channel, supporting other marketing efforts and ultimately, top-line sales.

5. The community willingly embraces a direct sales channel
Purists worry that connecting a community with any kind of sales channel will dilute the value of the community. While there is a risk of being too “salesy,” an inevitable by-product of a healthy community are product discussions. Seeing these, SAP set up an online store called SAP EcoHub that started within the community and is now an increasing channel that drives real leads and revenue.

6. The community impacts product development
Customer-generated ideas have long been discussed as the holy grail of community activation, but getting there can be perilous. “The last thing we wanted to do was have a bunch of people contribute ideas and then have nobody listen or act on them,” Rodgers says. Working closely with the “proactive” product teams on selective topics, he has “gotten great feedback and contributions from the community that are already incorporated in the latest solutions.”

7. The marketing group wants in
Successful communities like the SCN are often started outside of marketing departments as a form of post-sale customer service. This orientation gives the community a head start since the emphasis is on creating content of genuine value and not pure product messaging. But with the heightened interest in having robust social media programs, it is not surprising that the SAP marketing department grabbed the reins of the SCN six months ago.

8. The community drives cultural change within marketing
Rodgers, who has run the SCN for five years, might have been apprehensive when marketing subsumed his group earlier this year, but you wouldn’t know it now. “Last year, our CMO said, ‘Guys we need to learn from [the SCN] and we need to have conversations and engage with our audience. We can’t just create another email blast with a bunch of creative and an offer.’”

9. The content developed on the community profoundly improves SEO
With a staff of 12 dedicated to developing formal content like white papers, articles and solutions briefs, Rodgers is able to keep up with his ravenous community, feeding it fresh content on a daily basis. And by optimizing this content for search, starting about 2 years ago, the SCN was able to more than double monthly site traffic. “I mean it was dramatic; it was unbelievable,” Rodgers observes with a sense of pride and awe.

Final note: It’s not often you hear about a huge B2B company operating with a B2C mentality for customer engagement. For my complete interview with Chip Rodgers, see my previous post here.  You can visit the SAP Community Network at and hear Rodgers yourself at the upcoming B2B Corporate Social Media Summit in Philly on October 12th.  This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.