A popular misconception is that the social media, like traditional marketing channels, is all about selling a product. However, it is more about reaching your audience, engaging with them and developing a bond with customers.

Social media’s direct communication distinction serves and supports business as it brings the people you want to attract to you and makes direct participation, genuine engagement and a two-way communication possible. What’s more social media attracts far more traffic than search engines. This gives you freedom from paid advertising formats which are overloaded with unnecessary commercial overtones. What’s worth highlighting here is that the investments are mostly limited to just time, while the benefits derived far exceed costs.

Let’s look at how at the various ways you can leverage social media for your marketing efforts.

Content is the king in social media. Blogs are the simplest and most effective tool to interact with customers and invite comments to actively increase interest and create brand awareness. Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can be used a media tool to engage customers by sharing news, reports, stories and so on. The simplest and most effective strategy is to integrate these social media platforms to create multi touch points and promote viral marketing. Facebook and LinkedIn are well known platforms that can help you expand your presence and reach out to existing and new customers through interactive polls, quizzes and fan pages that create interest. Another significant approach that is central to your social media marketing strategy is to participate in interactive activities across existing social media accounts of similar businesses, customers, partners and potential customers. You could post blogs, make comments, share links, participate in polls or be an active member in their social media communities. This creates a push-pull effect in the online social market and projects you as an engaging brand that appeals to customers.

What everyone needs to understand is that, social media marketing is no rocket science that requires a geek’s expertise. It is something every one can do with some effort and knowledge. And best of all, everyone is invited to the party!

 Fundamentally this calls for a clear mindset change before we even start considering metrics and their analysis. Social media is not about lead generation and sales conversions. We need to understand that what we are trying to achieve is more long-term – it is about building conversations around our brand and relationships with our customers. As such, the exercise tends to be more qualitative than otherwise.

 Before developing a social media strategy, first establish specific objectives. This will help you in defining the roadmap and the tools that you will use, as well as the metrics that you need to track. What you choose to measure will depend on your goals.

 Metrics are easier to establish if they are business-driven. And as objectives can be qualitative or quantitative in nature, so also can metrics.

 Some of the quantitative metrics that you can track using traditional website analytics tools include visitors and traffic sources, number of followers, fans and members, changes in the follower count, number of retweets, etc. This will give you a direct indication of how your social media program is affecting the world around your brand. Equally important are metrics based on search engine rank and lead generation. You can also use standard digital measurement tools to track the number of people who click through to buy or register from your social media assets / sites.

 But the importance of social media really lies in the qualitative experience that you build around your brand. Hence start asking yourself: was I able to build a better relationship with my audience? Did I convert any detractors into supporters and passive audience into more engaged actors? In short, you need to measure the change in interest level and conversations happening around your brand. Study trends – what people are saying about the brand now versus what they were saying before you started. Have you been able to influence perceptions? Also analyze the kind of relationship that you have built with influential bloggers and Twitterers. Measuring progress towards your social media objectives will give you a good idea of how much impact your campaigns have had.

 There are already some good social media measurement tools available on the market today – Google Analytics, Omniture, TweetMeme Analytics – and more become available each day as the importance of measuring ROI in social media is recognized. Some social media tools come with their own measurement tools such as Facebook’s Insights.

 But what is essential to remember once you have all the data at your disposal, is to make it usable and actionable – use the data to inform your decision-making and to further your social media initiatives.

Integrating social media with offline media is an effort to enhance the impact of offline communication initiatives, and, in turn, use offline to advertise your social presence and drive traffic to your pages. Offline communications have the power to drive online conversations. Each time you air an interesting ad or announce a new product launch, you can be sure that people are going to be talking about it online – reviewing it, commending it, tearing it to pieces! If your company has a foot in either space, you can monitor these online conversations and fine-tune your offline efforts to address expectations, needs and preferences.

The first aspect to focus on when integrating media efforts is consistency – of tone, of messaging, and of information, across all channels of communication. You do not want to confuse your customer by advertising one price for your product in a print ad and another on your Facebook page!

Here are some ways in which online and offline media can be integrated to good effect:

• Traditional broadcast media, like a radio ad, can be used to initiate a discussion which is then taken online by inviting listeners to participate in a poll, for example. 
• PR activity can be complemented with blogs and twitter posts each time there is a product launch or new initiative. Blogs have an immediacy that press releases lose out on – they are also more personal and add a ‘human’ touch to the company. This would work well, especially, in a crisis situation, where, besides the formal press release that goes out, you can have representatives blogging honestly about what went wrong, what remedial actions are being taken, etc.
• When you are organizing an event, be sure to use social media to build atmosphere and excitement around it by showcasing a microsite, organizing online contests, blogging updates, etc. Post the event, photos, videos and presentations can be shared online.
• Make social media a part of direct marketing as well. If you have a regular newsletter being mailed out to your contacts, include links to your Facebook page, twitter profile and blog. Content in the newsletter can link back to some blogs as well. This also encourages your contact list to start following you online rather than merely waiting for newsletter updates.
• Bring your offline customers online. Put your Facebook and Twitter page address on your brochures and business cards. Add the URL of your social media profiles on ads.

These are just some examples of how the old and the new can be combined to form a powerful and integrated communication conduit. There are many more routes out there by which your online and offline media can come together in creative ways to offer your customers a compelling and unforgettable brand experience. So come on catch on to both gold & platinum!

There are different levels of collaboration with customers. Usually companies solicit customer feedback or suggestions and then take it over from there. On the other hand, some companies may involve consumer feedback and ideation at every stage of the development process. Depending on the kind of product, both processes work and create a sense that the company cares about consumer perception. 

So how does a company communicate with consumers? The simplest and easiest way is to establish a user group to encourage feedback and build a community. It acts as a forum to discuss customer concerns and future developments.  It must also include company representatives to provide feedback and identify future requirements.

Another area where customer collaboration will help is when updating or modifying existing products. This requires companies to solicit customer views on the original product and the changes they would like to see. This creates the perception that the new product is tailor-made to customer requirements, strengthens relationships and increases customer loyalty.

Customer collaboration can also help in evaluating and testing new products. In fact, customer evaluation, or beta testing, is a well established mechanism in the software industry for involving customers in the product development process. This helps in identifying potential problems and shortcomings before market release.

Companies should understand how customers utilize their products. This is because with a good understanding of usage, it is possible to develop products better suited to their needs. If the company is engaged in the B2B market, awareness of their client’s key markets will help companies align their plans with customer plans.  

Customer collaboration allows companies to not just meet customer demands, but anticipate them. The more a customer requires and uses a product, the more demanding that customer will be. By anticipating and meeting these demands, your customers remain happy and business improves. 

Using these methods it is possible to gain business benefit and profit while increasing customer loyalty and goodwill. While most companies conduct some type of research, detailed inputs and customer insights are essential especially if a new product or service is produced.  One mistake companies usually make is restricting consumer groups to announce release dates or problems or in response to a crisis. This is frustrating to customers who might need greater involvement and wasteful to companies that aren’t taking advantage. 

Finally, while companies are understandably worried about bad feedback or negative reactions, customer collaboration can also give it new ideas, angles, perspectives or simply, a new point of view. After all, if the company wants to sell to the customer, it needs to listen to the customer as well.  Your customer is calling you…are you therer?

The difference is evident in the approach to marketing in itself. As B2B marketing focuses on the value of one business to another, the target market is relatively limited. The value of personal relationships is higher in this kind of marketing with frequent conversations and meetings essential to the deal. Rather than emphasizing the ‘selling’ function, B2B marketing is more focused on educational and awareness building activities. 

Contrast this to a B2C marketing cycle with a large target group, shorter sales cycle and a single decision making step. This kind of marketing involves merchandising, advertising and displays.

The decision making process is also different in the B2B and B2C types of marketing. Consumers that make the wrong choice may regret it but they don’t lose business deals or accounts for it. B2B decisions however have far reaching reactions – they are often costly and critical to a company. Making the wrong decision can cause the company to lose business accounts or profits. The entire decision making process is also longer with a plethora of higher ups and seemingly endless cycles of approvals from different departments and executives.    

A requirement common to both B2B and B2C is a strong brand. However this is where the similarity ends. In B2C markets, the brand encourages loyalty, increased purchases and higher prices. The consumers’ choice also depends on status, quality, comfort or style. On the other hand, in B2B marketing, a strong brand may help a company get considered, not necessarily selected. The buying decisions here largely depend on the value a product or service can offer as compared to competitors.

In conclusion, though B2B marketing initially developed as an offshoot of the traditional B2C marketing, the area has gained sufficient maturity to develop its own methodology and style. Understanding the similarities and differences between the two strategies are important if marketing activities need to succeed. 

So the next time you are hired as a marketing manager for a B2B or B2C firm remember to use the right rule books!

Harness the power of new media

Engaged customers will do the marketing for you by sending people to your website, praising you and taking the conversation that you started far beyond people you thought you could ever reach. For that to happen, you have to first start the conversation.

How do you find out what your customer is saying? There are around 60 million blogs on the internet, each with the capacity for interactive commentary, plus online forums that provide commentary on specific market sectors and social networking sites. However, this requires you to engage with your customer, understand the kind of product or service they require and start a conversation. 

The viral marketing phenomenon is also something that marketers have tapped into, sometimes to a great effect. While McDonald owns the family friendly category, Burger King has cultivated a mischievous, fun image with brash, arresting campaigns using new media like YouTube, video games, iPods that were then distributed, imitated and enjoyed by customers.  In addition, customers that are fans of a particular brand also create their own videos and content that is interesting and viewed multiple times.     

However, as customers wrest the controls from brand managers and are put in charge, it becomes less easy to control everything said about your brand. With the proliferation of interactive sites, brands have to learn to take the good with the bad and be prepared for adverse comments. For instance, Carlsberg during the World Cup, promoted an image of 11 women in football shirts, lining up for kick-off. The image could be edited and passed around, but the campaign seriously backfired when someone added very uncomplimentary remarks on the taste of the beer.

This forms customer led marketing where the customer shapes the brand experience. In the future content will not simply be something your company pushes out but an invitation to engage with your brand. And customers will not expect to be told what they require; they’ll want to be asked.

Online reputation today is the fastest and easiest means of building a good image. But bad press travels fast through blogs, forums, message boards etc. And the situation gets worse if the information is untrue, outdated or inaccurate. Hence, most companies employ reputation management. Reputation management is an ongoing process at all levels; it includes building a reputation, maintaining one and recovery in case of crisis. It also involves tracking people’s opinions and actions towards an organization.

B2C organizations are more prone to reputation crisis than B2B companies since they directly deal with their customers, which means that their reputation is at stake every time they have a crisis to handle or a new deal to tackle.

Considering the recent case of Nestle and their run-in with Greenpeace on the palm oil issue, the way Nestle chose to go about their crisis situation is a classic example of how a crisis must not be handled (making a copyright claim instead of acknowledging the issue itself). Nestle had to face immense backlash because of their hasty reactions to the allegations made by Greenpeace. Not only did they have to eventually apologize for the environmental hazards they were causing but also discontinue business with their palm oil suppliers. Additionally, Nestle also had to make reputation amendments off the Internet to cover for all the damage to the reputation of the company.

To make amends to such a situation, first of all, organizations must anticipate repercussions of their action. Responding to a situation with a calm disposition always works better than taking on the situation with a vengeance. There are immediate steps one can take to mend the problem if not solve it, is to gracefully confront it without being dishonest. Though one of the common approaches is to try and stifle the negative reviews, one must try and ethically combat the issue. Effective offline measures, like PR, can also draw attention to the steps undertaken to deal with the crisis.

B2B organizations on the other hand, do not go through such ordeal. However they are also not completely immune -  a few negative comments on  anonymous blog posts or on the company’s portal can snowball into a crisis and create bad publicity. Hence, reputation management techniques are employed to save the day in such cases.

Examples such as these show not only how important building a reputation is but also how hard it is to maintain a good one.

Competition in the global business environment is tough and corporations are increasingly becoming aware of the value that a unique positioning and identity can bring. As a result, a strong corporate branding strategy will require personal attention from senior executives in order to be implemented effectively and meet objectives.  

It is often wrongly thought that corporate branding refers to the company logo, colour scheme and template designs. For example: while Apple’s logo is distinctive and unique, it also brings to mind their design-driven and innovative vision. A strong brand builds perceptions and attitudes in the minds of its customers, which require more than glossy marketing and fancy advertising. It adds value by creating a unique position in the market, simplifies the achievement of long-term goals and finally defines the culture and caliber of the organization.

Once a strong corporate brand image has been achieved, it takes many resources to keep and need to be sustained carefully. But this does not mean that only brands with a long history in the market can be established brands. Many up-and-coming labels have also become popular brands such as Google. Google has even made the leap from a brand into mainstream vocabulary as people started using the phrase “just google it”. This is branding as well, when users take the brand into their everyday lives.

Successful corporate branding is all about crafting a company’s communication, products and operating style with a long term branding vision in mind. It is also a public statement of a company’s culture and value. For instance, HSBC bank, one of the world’s largest banks, has the tagline “The World’s Local Bank,” which both portrays itself as a powerful global bank, but builds on its focus and concern for regular people and their lives. It’s a universal image they project throughout the world with the help of the tagline, their operating style and services.

Many people who see brand names such as Nokia, Mercedes, or even Dell will associate these companies with being reliable, their products being value for money and competent and quality services at all times. Such is the power of corporate branding.

Twitter has evolved from a platform for friends to stay connected to an important component of marketing in the corporate world. TechCrunch reports that Twitter receives 8 million unique visitors a month and approximately 3 million messages are posted daily. With so many conversations taking place and social media dominating a large part of people’s social and professional lives today, it becomes imperative to adopt this medium.

As a channel for the branding and marketing strategies of companies, Twitter works perfectly by creating awareness, analyzing customer trends and influencing behaviour. Smart companies use Twitter to engage with their customers and market their products or services. To start with, companies need to create a Twitter profile and provide general information about them, new products or developments, offers and other notifications. These ‘tweets’ are then followed by ‘followers’ or potential customers thus creating an opportunity to interact with multiple customers, collect feedback, gauge customer reactions , track competition and market new or existing products.

 While using Twitter as a marketing tool, keep in mind that there are multiple ways to use this new medium and to be effective and extract full advantage; you have to look into them all.

Learning curve: Twitter provides a search engine that is quite unique and provides innovative search parameters along with more traditional ones. Other than company, brand and personal names, twitter even allows search by emotional coloring (positive or negative) or sentence semantic structure (questions). Its essential that companies find out what is being tweeted about them – how is the buzz level, any negative comments etc.

 Irrespective of whether a company is on Twitter, it will be talked about. This is why keeping tabs on what people are discussing is important.

Mass Media: Though Twitter isn’t exactly a form of mass media, posting a link to a news update or product launch will ensure that the company’s followers are kept informed. However, ensure that the information is of interest and value to the customers.

Promotions: While posting promotions, sales and offers remember that Twitter thrives on conversation and interesting tidbits. Information should be personal and conversational rather than reading like an advertisement.

Brand Personality: Companies that cannot invest in interacting with customers should not use Twitter. Engaging and involving with people provides optimal service besides creating a unique style and personality.

So “to tweet or not to tweet”…I don’t think it’s a question to ponder over anymore!

The sheer accessibility of social media has allowed organizations to increase their brand awareness and open dialogues with their customers. By creating content that attracts attention, opens conversations and is viewed by their target groups, an organization is able to reach out directly to the customers. If the social media tactics are effective, it can direct traffic to the company website and get high quality links for the organization, thereby increasing its visibility. A company’s social media platform should be thought of as a platform that connects it with its external audience, even if only for a few minutes. If people are interested in the company’s message they will respond and may even recommend your message to others.

Social media can serve as an inexpensive marketing platform with costs limited to time and high benefits. While buying links and increasing visibility would take money, social media can do that for free. Additionally, once a company has mastered their social media strategy, it can increase web traffic by strategically using social media to target specific communities.

Another reason why companies should use social media marketing is that it complements other marketing efforts and provides an additional channel for communicating to the customer and gaining insights into the target audience. To support other marketing activities, a company’s social media should be built on a strong foundation – centralized information, regular updates and profiles in most popular social media. If the messages are relevant and provide value to customers, social media marketing can be integrated seamlessly into other marketing efforts.

Examples of tools that can benefit a company are as follows:

• Wall posts, and fans on the Facebook page of an organization
• Tweets & blog posts to announce new releases
• Rating and ranking videos, as performed by YouTube

Social media is quickly moving from an emerging form to the mainstream, which requires organizations to adopt new ways to tap into this media and extract information.