Tag: social media marketing

CMO Insights: The CMO Club Summit

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Probably nobody in the world talks to more CMO’s than Pete Krainik, founder of The CMO Club.  I caught up with Pete last week after The CMO Club Summit in New York City and asked him for the inside scoop on CMO’s and social media.  Here’s our Q&A:

DN: There was a lot of conversation at The CMO Club Summit about social media.  Why do you think this is the case?
CMOs care about customer engagement and having a reason and vehicle for listening, having a conversation, and sharing their Brands.  Social media is simply the best way, for many brands to do this.  Every Brand has different products/services and customers so the conversation’s centered on new and game changing ideas they can build on for their industry, customer base and products.

The other big reason is about marketing mix optimization.  Every dollar and resource focused correctly is worth significantly more than before. More targets, more marketing vehicles results in more interest in getting it right.

DN: Do you expect this conversation to grow over the next 12 months or are CMOs approaching Social Media fatigue?
The conversation will grow but move from social media to social marketing and social branding.   I’ve noticed within The CMO CLUB that more and more 1-1 conversations with CMOs to think through synergies for sharing resources together.  Moving from company specific apps, communities, programs to a community of Brands approach.  Very interesting times ahead.

DN: The CMO’s at the event seemed to be at various stages of the adoption curve when it comes to social media, why do you think that is the case?
A number of reasons.  For larger, more technical B2B Brands, a smaller number of customers are leveraging social media so the call to action and priority is different than for B2C Retailers and CPG companies.  Also some companies focus on innovation leadership while others are fast followers, etc.  Finally global companies have issues of rollout and priority by region, product lines, etc.

DN: What role does social media play in the marketing of the CMO club?
Given the club is an exclusive “heads of marketing only” community with the mission of facilitating the world’s best CMO conversations, Social media has been the single more important vehicle for the growth of membership. Two out of every 3 new members in the club come from referrals and recommendations from heads of marketing in the club.

We not only use social media for communicating new posts and events from members, but the members only site itself is a community site vs. website. Everything from member blog posts, member Q/A, New CMO jobs on the market, vendor rating programs, plus content in the CMO CLUB Thought Leadership Library is contributed from members.  Social media is used to share member insights, build subgroups of interests, and listen to members.

Our weekly poll question of members has gone from 75 to 150 members per week responding, then sharing and discussing results. The value of the club is to help CMOs connect with peers, share insights, and stay sharp and competitive as heads of marketing.  Social media and our social community platform is the catalyst to make it happen.

DN: Pete closed by noting that the October 2011 CMO Club Summit in Los Angeles will have a large section focused on “CMO worthy” innovations in social media.

Bring on the Facebook Love Button

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Social media practitioners have pursued “Likes” of late like they were going out of style.  Land on the Facebook page for brands such as Bud Light, Mercedes and Allstate and the appeal to hit the Like button is a full-page event.  Not that this is in itself  bad business; in fact many social media gurus would call this a “best practice.”  But after spending two days with companies seeking game-changing levels of customer satisfaction, the simple pursuit of Like feels inadequate, if not downright unlikeable.

Explained Deborah Eastman, GM of Business Consulting at Satmetrix, the host of the Satmetrix Net Promoter Conference I attended last week, “Like to me is opting in, I don’t think it identifies you as a promoter or a passive or a detractor.”  More to the point, Eastman added, “I don’t think Net Promoter is about like, its about love.”  And while this might seem like a subtle distinction, the brands that are currently pursuing “Love” as a business strategy are also starting to bring this mentality to their social activities.

Mighty Leaf Tea Brews Up Love

In her presentation on the intersection of social media and Net Promoter, Eastman highlighted a number of good and not so good cases.  Among the better ones was Mighty Leaf Tea, a company known for having fanatical loyalists.  Including a customer support tab on its Facebook page, Mighty Leaf offers its fans a chance to ask questions, share an idea, report a problem and give praise.  (By the way, their Support tab is powered by Get Satisfaction’s Facebook app.)

Type in a question about Mighty Leaf on their support tab and you just might find an answer already there from another fan.  Encouraging customer to customer interactions not only builds a sense of community around a brand but it also offers the potential to lower customer service costs as “promoters” do the company’s work.  That said, relying on Facebook fans exclusively to do this work could lessen the love.  With a number of the questions posted by fans currently unanswered on Facebook, love for Mighty Leaf could be leaking just a bit.

VirginMedia Plugs into Love

Eastman also pointed to VirginMedia, “the Comcast of the UK,” as a company plugged into the social scene. With a “tweam” in place monitoring tweets 24/7, VirginMedia was more than ready when actor/comedian Stephen Fry tweeted about his cable service going down to his over 2 million Twitter followers.  Relaying the complaint to customer service, VirginMedia rushed a repair truck to Fry’s house and within a couple of hours had fixed the problem.

Not surprisingly, Fry was overjoyed by the speed of Virgin’s response, singing their praises in tweet after tweet.  Recognizing that customer “voices” are not all created equal, Virgin’s response to Fry’s very public complaint was indeed impressive both in terms of speed and cross-functional integration.  Interestingly, VirginMedia is not quite on its game with Facebook, where a veritable “suckfest” is happening on their Review’s tab with service complaints piling up like open wounds in a knife fight.

Like is Not Love

My purpose in sharing these two mini-cases is multi-fold.  First, is the simple recognition that gaining a Like is nice but hardly an end in itself.  True brand advocates are created and maintained by doing things that exceed expectations.  If you put up a Facebook fan page, it is expected that you, the brand, will respond within at least 24 hours.  However, if your CEO responds, as Michael Dell does on some occasions via his tweets, then you just might blow someone away.

Another key here is the recognition that social media is best approached from a customer experience perspective rather than a marketing channel.  Marketing tends to focus on what to say while customer experience professionals emphasize actions, asking themselves “what can we do to turn this nice customer into a super promoter?”  This approach yields such social innovations as BestBuy’s Twelpforce and the use of functional apps like Get Satisfaction’s on Facebook fan pages.

This particular understanding may also effect where you put your social media team within the organization.  Explained Gibbs Jones, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience at Suddenlink, a cable company making bold moves to improve customer satisfaction, “social media is a shared responsibility between Customer Experience and Corporate Communication (PR), with some involvement from Marketing.”  Since Gibbs and his team are actively pursuing Love, they know a simple Like is just the table stakes, akin to “just responding during business hours.”

Then there is the rather advanced notion that social media can and should be integrated into what the Satmetrix folks call a “closed-loop process.”  Explained Eastman, “you need to know if they are customers or not; you need to know if they are high value customers or not.”  With this knowledge, you can begin to craft an appropriate customer experience that ultimately integrates social into a systematic monitoring of customer engagement across all touch points.

Are You Ready for the Love Button?

Pursuing Love via social media will put you way ahead of the crowd. Reported Eastman, “few of our customers are integrating social media in Net Promoter at this point,” and these are the folks that are leading the way with Love-engendering customer experiences in just about every other channel.  One exception is Chick-fil-a, whose legendary in-store customer experiences have begun to inform their approach to Facebook, drawing a whopping 3.7million Likes thus far.  Undoubtedly, should Zuckerberg and Co. heed our call for a Love button, true fans of brands like Chick-fil-a will simply eat it up.

Final note: turns out there is a lot of demand for a Love button as this amusing video demonstrates.

The State of Guerrilla Marketing

Posted on by Drew Neisser

The following is a Q&A with yours truly on the current state of affairs in guerrilla marketing.

Q: How has guerrilla marketing evolved?

Guerrilla thinking has evolved tremendously in the last 24 months. Press seeking guerrillas have shifted away from street theater to something with online legs. Part of this is fishing where the fish are. Part of this is that if you can gain Likes or YouTube channel subscriptions, your initial contact can turn into a more lasting relationship. Part of this is the press itself—the press is more likely to wax on about a social program than a purely street program at this moment in time.

Q: What’s up with street stunts?

Frankly, I’ve never been a fan or promoter of the street stunt approach. They are typically a brief encounter with little residual value. The challenge with guerrilla has always been to provide a reasonable exchange of value between brand and consumer. In exchange for a consumer’s time, the brand must provide some value, either genuine utility or at least a good laugh. The reason the HSBC BankCab is still on the road after seven years is that the value exchange is extraordinary. First, people love to see an old Checker driving around the streets. Second, when they get in the BankCab, it is a refreshing experience complete with a truly knowledgeable cabbie. Third, HSBC customers get a free ride when engenders brand love. We recently renovated the HSBC BankCab, enabling it to run on compressed natural gas, thus making it a more “green” experience. As street programs go, this is about as good as it gets.

Q: What’s cool right now?

The most exciting area of guerrilla right now, is the social to offline movement. Skittles “Mob the Rainbow” program is one great example of this. Skittles solicits ideas from its 10 million strong Facebook fan base, which sometimes lead to hilarious offline executions. For example, fans suggested sending Valentines to a particular postal worker. Skittles did just that and produced a funny viral video which brought the program full circle. JetBlue is using its strong Twitter following in a similar fashion. Earlier this year, @JetBlue tweeted they were on a particular street corner in Manhattan giving away tickets. In a matter of minutes, 300 eager travelers showed up and of course, JetBlue got some nice ink for this as well. In this way, social media has replaced email as the ignition switch for flash mobs.

Q: How does social fit into a guerrillas plans?

Any marketer considering a physical guerrilla interaction would be crazy not to also bake in a social component. The social component should give the program legs, extending the offline interaction online. It also provides a home for videos and or photos taken of the physical interaction thus sharing these experiences with a larger audience. The social component also helps amortize the cost of the potentially expensive offline component. Finally, the social component provides an opportunity for feedback something that is not always easy to get in the physical arena.

Q: Is the physical street experience dead?

Since marketing success has often been about zigging when others zag, a few enlightened marketers will renew their emphasis on the physical experience and the true engagement opportunity it represents. Touching someone deeply often requires a physical touch. Online dating sites do the matchmaking but typically the fire doesn’t flame until the couple actually meets.

Q: What roles are left for guerrilla marketing?

Guerrilla thinking has never been dependent on one particular type of interaction. It has always been about making more out of less, breaking the ice in order to build meaningful and hopefully lasting relationships. Social marketing has proven its ability to maintain and nurture relationships but the jury is still out on its ability to generate trial from new customers.

Q: How has Renegade evolved from a guerrilla standpoint?

I see social marketing as an evolution of our long-time guerrilla practice. The goals haven’t changed but the tactics  we use continue to grow and evolve. Five years ago, three out of four incoming calls would be from clients seeking guerrilla ideas. Now those same clients are requesting social marketing ideas. The impetuous for the calls is the same—help us engage customers cost-effectively.

[“Delivery.com Street Stunt in October”][]

Fight Social Media Fire with Social Media Water

Posted on by Drew Neisser

“I’m just the guy who gets it,” offers the humble yet vivacious Ramon DeLeon when explaining his unlikely rise from delivering pizzas around Chicago’s lakeshore to delivering keynote addresses on social media around the world. What seems to be intuition for DeLeon is in fact an uncanny ability to be way ahead of the curve, to observe what’s going on with his target and adapt accordingly. DeLeon gets it in a way that is both inspiring and enlightening, offering a tasty guide to social media success.

1. It’s Not About the Pizza

Marketers long-trained to push out messaging, often look at social media as a new channel to tell their story. A few minutes with DeLeon and they will realize the folly of this approach. In fact, I spent 40 minutes on the phone with DeLeon talking through his social media success stories before the quality of his pizza even came up. The truth is that when it comes to social media, it is simply not about the pizza. “My focus has always been on the consumer,” noted DeLeon. “Out of ten tweets, maybe only one will mention our product.”

2. It’s About Connecting with the Customer

Most companies pay lip service to customer service, hiding behind phone trees and avoiding intimate interactions. DeLeon, on the other hand, has been on a first name basis with his customers ever since his days delivering pizza. Explained DeLeon, “My whole thing is the connection with the customer—how can I help you?” Starting first with Instant Messaging then Facebook in the mid-90’s, DeLeon established tight bonds with the local college kids so much so that when they graduated, those students brought Domino’s with them into their new companies.

3. Make Deposits in the “Good Will” Bank

Many CEO’s ask their marketing head’s to focus on “things that deliver immediate ROI,” often at the expense of relationship building. DeLeon likens marketing to dating, noting that he “always includes customers in marketing pieces to give some love back after spending [their] hard earned dollars and to create very strong bonds.” These bonds were money in the bank when Domino’s faced it’s YouTube video crisis in 2009. Noted DeLeon, “because of the relationships we had with customers they had our back, so they still would order and support in confidence.”

4. Fight Social Media Fire with Social Media Water

When two young Domino’s employees in North Carolina posted a video of them cooking a pizza with cheese they’d put up their nose, Domino’s Corporate and the local franchise were both caught completely off guard. Not so DeLeon. He immediately created his own video, noting how horrific the other one was, and then follow up with anyone in Chicago who commented online about the offending video. Local bloggers and tweeters responded favorably to his outreach, acknowledging that DeLeon had been “part of the social media scene forever” and would “never let such a thing happen in his stores.” Remarkably, DeLeon’s store sales actually rose during this period while nationally Domino’s took a hit and the local NC franchise ultimately went out of business.

5. Learn To Apologize (Really Well)

Admitting a mistake often comes hard to corporate America. DeLeon, on the other hand, has turned apologizing into a PR-generating, customer-satisfying art form. When a well-known local blogger had a problem with a delivery and wrote about, DeLeon responded with an amazingly heartfelt video apology they he posted on his YouTube and Facebook pages. In the video he and his shamefaced manager invited the blogger into the store to “make things right.” DeLeon’s apology video has been watched over 125,000 times and is regularly showcased in speeches by marketing gurus Seth Godin and Jeanne Bliss.

6. Don’t Get Bogged Down by Trying to Measure Everything

Much to the chagrin of marketers, not every effort, online or otherwise, can be tied to sales. DeLeon believes that “sometimes there are too many metrics,” adding, “how much do you love your wife?” As an example, DeLeon points to a poster program in his stores that invites customers to take pictures of themselves in front of a Domino’s poster and share them with friends. “I’m not telling them to tag these or anything—just share them with your world,” noted DeLeon, who praises the program as generating good will and giving his customers something to do while they wait for their pizzas.

7. Make Each Program Your Own

Geo-based social networks like Foursquare are just emerging as powerful tools for local retailers. Not surprisingly, DeLeon was one of the first retailers to try Foursquare in Chicago, but did not settle for the norm of giving something free to the people who checked-in most at each of his stores. Instead, DeLeon challenged his “mayors” to take responsibility like a real mayor; “to do whatever [they] think [they] gotta do to keep me in business!” By putting the onus on his best customers to “represent” his stores and rewarding them by allowing them to give free pizzas to whomever they chose, DeLeon tightened his relationships and made the program his own.

8. Have Fun and Keep it Real

Fun is not a word that is heard a lot of outside of start-ups. Ramon DeLeon evaluates his own success with two questions, “am I having fun?” and “are our sales and profitability up?” The fun part for DeLeon is a constant, since he clearly loves connecting with people, whether he is on stage, behind a counter, on Facebook/Twitter/Foursquare or in his homemade video shout-outs. Regardless of the channel, DeLeon tries to be the same person and advises all others to take this approach. Concluded DeLeon, “there are real people behind these tweets and I just want to have fun with them.”

Final Note: While DeLeon could not offer actual sales figures, he noted with pride that sales growth in his stores over the last 18-months has significantly out-performed both the Chicago market and national average for Domino’s stores.  This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.

Profound Advice from the Pizza Delivery Guy

Posted on by Drew Neisser

For want of a belt, Ramon DeLeon almost didn’t get the part-time job delivering pizzas that launched his remarkable career. Fortunately for us, he overcame this hurdle just as he has so many before and since, becoming a highly successful businessman, not to mention the most effective practitioner of social media I’ve yet to meet.

How he got from delivering pizzas to delivering keynotes on social media is a fascinating tale of chutzpah and perseverance, of street smarts and tech savvy, providing a road map for any kid from any neighborhood, anyone willing that is to start small and think big. A two-part series, this first one focuses on the business lessons gleaned from an extensive interview with Ramon a few days ago.

Borrow a Belt (i.e. Do Whatever Else it Takes to Get Started)

Looking for a part-time job while still in school, DeLeon put in a cold call to a local Domino’s store. Having already delivered newspapers in the same Chicago neighborhood, DeLeon made his case well enough over the phone that they told him to show up for work the next day at 5pm. Arriving a half-hour early only to learn he’d lose the job if he didn’t find a belt to wear, DeLeon dashed to his sister’s to borrow a frilly ribbon number two-sizes too small, thus avoiding getting fired before he had even started.

Listening to DeLeon now, it is easy to downplay the significance of this little interlude. But if you’re a kid just getting out of school, you might want to take note. DeLeon was able to get his foothold in the industry that has made him highly successful by building up a portfolio of relevant experience, in this case delivering papers. When he got the opportunity to get in the next door, he didn’t let it slip by and instead scrambled to find a belt, however ridiculous it might have made him look that first day. He did whatever it took to get started.

Find the Joy in Pleasing Customers

DeLeon credits much of his success to his parents whom he described as his “biggest role models.” When DeLeon was in elementary school, his “blue-collar parents used to buy clothing wholesale and sell it at work or to friends.” He took note of the relationships they built with their friends and customers and tried to do the same when he started delivering pizzas. He paid attention to the smallest details, even how to park unobtrusively in driveways and how to ring doorbells to the customer’s liking.

When cellphones came along, DeLeon used them to improve the delivery experience, calling when no one answered the door. It wasn’t long before he’d get calls directly, saying “hey are you working today, we want to order pizza.” Like his parents, DeLeon was building strong ties with each of his customers, ties that distinguished him from his peers. At the same time, DeLeon found joy in pleasing customers, noting with pride, “it became a high for me, the excitement, the doorbell, the kids jumping and shouting ‘the pizza guy’s here!’”

Learn to Make the Pizza

After delivering pizza with aplomb for three years, his manager asked DeLeon to arrive early and open up the store since the shift manager was going to be late. Think Lou Gehrig filling in at first base for headache-pained Wally Pipp except for one key fact, metaphorically DeLeon didn’t know how to hit or catch. When the phone started ringing and orders arriving, DeLeon and another driver had no idea how to make a pizza but somehow they did just that.

When the manager did arrive, DeLeon exclaimed, “I don’t want to be in that situation again!” Taking time before and after his delivery shifts, DeLeon learned how to make the pizza and everything else the store sold. Shortly thereafter Domino’s asked DeLeon to join their management-training program. The lesson here for any of you starting out is clear–learn the business of the business even if it isn’t your primary job. In this way, when opportunity strikes, you’ll be able to jump in like DeLeon and Gehrig, relegating the Wally Pipp’s of the world to mere footnotes.

Take the Low Performing Store

Paying his dues as an assistant manager, DeLeon was working at one of the highest volume stores in Chicago when a manager spot opened up at an underperforming location. According to DeLeon, “there were other people more qualified to take over that store but no one wanted it.” Asked why he would want such a dog, DeLeon gamely offered, “When stuff is that low, the only thing you can do is look up.” Not surprisingly, DeLeon’s willingness to take on the bigger challenge paid off.

On the first day of the job, DeLeon somewhat brashly told his District Manager that his store was going to be off the underperformers list by the end of the week, even if that meant he had to buy the pizza himself. Knowing that he couldn’t transform the store alone, DeLeon “rounded up the right people who wanted to stay and let the others go who didn’t.” Having established his business goal and then put his team in place, DeLeon started a series of guerrilla marketing activities that helped his store set a nation wide Domino’s record for most consecutive weeks of sales growth.

Final Note: Ramon DeLeon did not have the advantage of an Ivy League education or social connections that would give him a head start. On the contrary, he started out at the proverbial bottom of the barrel, delivering pizzas on a part-time basis to pay for school. How he became a pioneering practitioner of social media is all the more remarkable and part 2 of this series (to follow later this week).  This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.

Charging up Small Biz on Social Media

Posted on by Drew Neisser

How American Express turned its OPEN Forum into the quintessential example of Marketing as Service

Lots of companies talk about being of service to their customers. Unfortunately, in most cases it is just talk.  American Express, on the other hand, has been walking the walk for many years, whether it’s providing access to exclusive tickets for special events or offering free radios at the US Open to listen while you watch.  These kinds of programs have helped AmEx maintain “cardmember” loyalty as well as attract new customers who want the same privileges.

The OPEN Forum, which originally launched in 2007, is AmEx’s latest and greatest example, a program designed to help small business owners grow their businesses by providing both insights and resources online. This is not a case of altruism but rather enlightened self-interest.  Noted Mary Ann Fitzmaurice Reilly, American Express OPEN, SVP of Partnerships & Business Development, “We already have a large part of the pie so our biggest opportunity is with small business growth—if they grow, we grow.”

This enlightened perspective has made OpenForum.com a runaway success.  According to Compete.com (see chart), monthly traffic has grown from a trickle 24 months ago to rivaling established small biz resources like FastCompany.com and Inc.com.  Over 11,000 small businesses have added their names to Connectodex, a combination social network and Rolodex for entrepreneurs that became part of the program in 2009.

The program has had the added benefit of pulling giant American Express into the forefront of social media marketing.  OPEN Forum was their first foray into Twitter and has nearly 10,000 followers.  It also provides some of the best social media marketing advice content available through its “partner” bloggers.  Recognizing that OPEN Forum is indeed the quintessential example of Marketing as Service, here are six key insights to charge up your brand’s social media marketing.

1. Research: Build off a Target Need

Given the expense of building a Marketing as Service program like the OPEN Forum, you best start with a solid foundation of research.  When explaining the origins of the OPEN Forum, Mary Ann revealed that, “Through our semi-annual Small Business Monitor survey, nearly 60% of customers told us that they found this new social media world really challenging.”  She added that, “Only 13% were tapping into social networking because they didn’t know how,” a need that the OPEN Forum has truly fulfilled.

2. Commit: Stay in it For the Long Haul

Embarking on a Marketing as Service program like this is not for those looking for an instant ROI.  “This is a commitment that we made and are going to continue to make,” noted Mary Ann, when I asked her about the program ROI.  “We didn’t go into this lightly and we didn’t go into this as a test,” she added, noting, “We leveraged insight and took a leap of faith.”  For other marketers considering such an approach, Mary Ann advised, “Don’t just dip your toe into the water, stick to your commitment.”

3. Partner: Don’t Try to Do it All Yourself

Now in its third year, the program “takes a small army, both internal and external,” offered Mary Ann, who mentioned a litany of external partners who help with site development, article content, online media and related live events. When discussing why AmEx sought outside help like Federated Media for bloggers, Mary Ann pointed out that, “You can’t do it alone, there are a lot of experts—leverage them to make the most robust solution you can.”

4. Evolve: Adapt with Changing Social Mores

Originally designed exclusively for cardmembers, in 2010 AmEx made the adventurous decision to open up the OPEN Forum to members of LinkedIn.  Noted Mary Ann, “when we saw that LinkedIn was opening up its platform, it made us think about the direction social media was going in.”  Walking the tightrope between exclusivity and social media’s openness, AmEx quickly discovered that “it allowed us to broaden the conversation beyond cardmembers which has really enriched the site for everyone.”

5. Extend: Social Means Face-to-Face Too

Once embarking on an ambitious online program like OPEN Forum, marketers sometimes forget about the importance of face-to-face interactions.  AmEx, on the other hand, has used the OPEN Forum to broaden its approach to trade shows, and according to Mary Ann they found, “A cross pollination of the physical and online social media worlds.” She added, “With bloggers at trade shows actually having live discussions that we film and put on OPEN Forum,” they were able to complete the marketing circle, working seamlessly between the offline and online channels.

6. Involve: Tap Into Your Community

One of the many positive by-products of building a community like OPEN Forum, is that you then have an opportunity for instant feedback including input on new products and services.  Noted Mary Ann, “When we launched AcceptPay (e-billing and payment acceptance), we put a video out there and got feedback that said, ‘great, we understand how it works, but what’s in it for me?’”  Responding with a new video that used a customer to explain how it works, Mary Ann acknowledged learning an important social media lesson, “It’s not about us telling you what you should do.”

Final Note:  While all of this may seem a bit altruistic, it is not in the least.  American Express is committed to being the brand of choice for small businesses, a business that is highly lucrative.  By helping small business owners grow their businesses with valuable content and networking opportunities, AmEx is essentially insuring its own future.

This article first appeared in edited form on FastCompany.com