DIGITAL MARKETING MID TERM EXAM 16th of March 2011 By Lauriane Laurent, MBA 2 A
1. In YOUR own words, what is the difference between traditional word-ofmouth marketing and Influence Marketing? Traditional word-of mouth marketing is different from Influence marketing because Influence Marketing involves the brand. What I mean is that, while in Traditional word-of-mouth marketing the brand launches a message, buzz online or offline and relies on its customers to talk about it around them, to their friends, family, colleagues etc., Influence Marketing is about sharing with your customers, involve in the conversations on social media and monitor them, intervene and mostly, find your key influencers. Key influencers are indeed those who are the most influent on the social media and who are trusted by the whole community, a sort of reference. The difference then between Traditional word-of-mouth and Influence Marketing is that the marketing funnel is upside down: in Influence Marketing, you count on a few people to spread your message and convert new customers, in Traditional word of mouth, you reach a large community of customers without really targeting specifically the individuals and hope the message will spread and convince a few.
2. Post a link to the article you read, in addition to the Slideshare. Highlight the key quote. How did the article expand your understanding of the assigned presentation? Support - contradict? Please be specific. The article I read can be http://fluent.razorfish.com/publication/?m=6540&l=1
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It is a very interesting article that was written by The Razorfish company in 2009. It is a good resume of what Social Influence Marketing is and, while it was written a few years ago (and technologies are evolving very fast!), many information are still useful and true. It well explains what Social Influence Marketing consists in, what influencers are, how to measure your company SIM score, who the key influencers are at the different steps of the purchasing process and what will be the new trends in this domain. Most of them revealed true. It is hard to find only one key quote as the whole report is very full of information, all of them as interesting as the others. Still, one sentence I noticed particularly is this one: “But their control shouldn’t be a cause for concern — so long as you have a well-defined strategy to engage with them in ways that do justice to the way they want to interact with you.” I think this sentence really support the idea of the PowerPoint. It highlights that companies should perceive SIM as a gift, an opportunity and not a threat. They should consider their community as their allies and not their enemies. Even more: they should enjoy engaging with their fans as it makes the relation between the brand and its fans more personal and so, more loyal. If the brands do not make any effort to understand their customers and take into account their comments, suggestions and ideas, then they should realize their failure is already planned. You cannot escape this trend as we all see it is the future and that it is constantly growing and evolving. They have to implement a new SIM strategy. Nobody says it is easy. It is brand new for many companies. Still, your customers will not be angry at you for making mistakes, only for not trying connecting with them truthfully.
3. What is the relationship between communities and your social brand give your insights for Slide 23. While a few years ago, communication between the brand and the customers where one way (from the brand to the customers), it is not true anymore. Before the brand communicate its messages and values to the guests and they had no power, almost no influence on the brand decisions, if we omit marketing surveys… Now, people are involved in the brand strategy and product design, at a level some of them may even do not be aware of. That is why I think the slide 23 of the PowerPoint was very cleverly thought. It well illustrates how we passed from the brand at the core of the marketing, spreading ideas to its community, to the brand community at the center of the brand strategy and decision. Indeed, what happen is that customers have become more and more powerful. People share on the net and trust more and more the other individuals’ reviews than the brand advertising. They skip or ignore more and more often this traditional marketing communication and brands had to admit that the new marketing tools are…their communities themselves!
4. What is the relationship between Klout scores and Influence Marketing? Is a Klout score meaningful? Klout scores help marketers to find their brand followers’ degree of influence on the social media like Twitter or Facebook. In that, it is linked to Influence Marketing as you can measure the individual influence on the net, find these people and interact with them, the aim being to engage them to help your brand spread its messages and gain more customers. Klout scores are quite meaningful as they take into account many parameters. It gives relevant and precise results which rather well represent the reality. For instance, it includes data like the number of fans in your community, the number of “likes” and “tweets”, the degree of influence of the people you reach and the value of your post (do they encourage interaction?). Still, we should be cautious with these data. Of course, there are valuable information and we can use them but we should not ignore that some parameters are still not included like bloggers’ influence (journalists and experts for instance) and only the main social networks are integrated. As a result, while we should not hesitate to use these metrics, we should not forget that it exists other key influencers on the net that we probably have no idea of. In addition, we should also remember that all the networkers are social influencers and may turn into key influencers one day. We should not neglect any of our followers, even if it is correct to focus more on some than others.
5. Choose one of the two hotels below: I chose to work on the Missoni Hotel. a)
Create a SIM action plan
We can notice on the Missoni hotel group that they have already set up the links to share about their sites on the main social networks. Still, the hotels of the group do not have a page of their own to share with their guests. Consequently, below is what I would advise the group to do:
b)
Create a page on the main social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr for instance (as we know how important visuals are these days), as well as a blog. Set up these pages and customize them, make them attractive and welcoming. Set up a social marketing plan! Do not think you can succeed with no objective and no clear view of what you will post, or how you will engage with your customers, what the tone of your pages will be and what your contents will consist in. Post regularly and varied contents. You should alternate your contents and try to bring fresh news all the time to encourage the customers to come back. Remember that content should not focus on your brand or about selling! You may talk about it sometimes but you mostly have to find how to make your fans share, interact, speak about them! What you want is learning about them and establishes trust. It takes time so do not be too impatient. SIM requires time and efforts but it is very rewarding if you are very committed. Post pictures and videos as it makes your pages more attractive and UGC are always very successful. Interact with your fans. At the least occasion, do not hesitate to intervene to help your community, answer the questions, give additional information and just thank them or greet the more loyal fans! Set up a booking engine on your social pages as well as an interactive brochure. Social Commerce is the new trend of 2011. Do not miss the train! Post special offers and contests on your social sites. Develop a Social Loyalty Program on your social sites. Use Klout to determine who your influencers are, “use” them and reward them for instance when they book at one of your hotels (including Klout data in your reservation system). Clearly state your objectives
The objectives here are to:
c)
Develop your community by establishing trust and hopefully loyalty. Treat all your flowers as equal and, even if you can focus on the most important, show them the same respect. Improve your brand image thanks to socializing and being more human Increase your conversion rate (from followers to buyers) Find your key influencers, enter in contact with them and make them contribute to your brand development and success. After finding the key influencers, reach their communities and try to find our new key influencers! Develop new tools to attract your customers and make them become more loyal (contest, LBS loyalty program etc) Select at least 3 Social Media as tactics (no points for Facebook). Explain why you selected these specific media
The 3 social media I would choose are:
Twitter because it is the place to be to receive information from all around the world in real time, post last news, comments, contests, links to your videos, blog articles etc.
Foursquare because Location Social sites are becoming more and more important and can help the hotel to develop LBS and loyalty programs. Flickr, which is a Social site where you can share pictures of your hotels and engage your guests to contribute and comment. It is becoming more and more important for customers to be able to see what they buy.
d)
Show how the selected Social Media have synergies
The social media that I chose complete each other, which results very positive. The combination of the 3 helps us to be present on different kind of social sites and then to reach different targets. As a result, it also helps us to have more key influencers, which results in a growing community! Indeed, a presence on Twitter enables our brand to share quickly to a large number of people, to share links and have a high return. You can link all your posts to this site. It is more general. Flickr is ideal for sharing pictures. It may improve and reassure people before booking and encourage them to comment and share their own pictures, supporting the value of our brand. Last, a presence on Foursquare is perfect as we want to follow the growing trend of LBS and the location loyalty programs based on check-in. e)
How will you measure the results of the Influence Marketing
The results of the SIM can be measured thanks to:
Tools like Klout that will give us our own score, our influence on the web and the one of our key influencers to see how they succeed in spreading our message and image. Use our social sites metric analytics to see how we do on Facebook, Twitter etc. It includes the pages viewings, the time spent on our pages, the number of “likes” and “tweets” etc. The sales progression on the social media. The ratio of positive to negative comments on our social media.