Socialbakers Jan Rezab on the Road from Traditional to Social Marketing

Remember the good old days when customer interactions were between you and the customer?

Those days are over. It used to be easy. They bought your product, took it home and liked it or they didn't. Sometimes they'd call to complain, but that was between the customer service rep and the customer. Now dissatisfaction or appreciation of a product or service is between the customer, the business and all of their friends and followers. Competition is high, choices are plentiful and the end product is only part of the package.

So why do businesses think they can still ignore what their customers say on social media?

Jan Rezab is out to change that. 

Jan is CEO of Socialbakers, a social media analytics firm that tracks the level of customer engagement on social media platforms. He believes that social media is the marketing game in today's world, saying "it is cheaper, more targeted, more engaging and more effective than traditional channels." 

From Liking to Engagement

But it isn't just about listening to your customers or gathering followers. Those are just continuations of the one way method of communications used in the past. The key to the game in Jan's mind is engagement. He defines engagement as "communicating effectively so that your audience (your customers) becomes involved enough to interact with you and your brand," or as Socialbakers terms it, being "socially devoted" to your customers.

Content plays a key role in this engagement. By providing customers with unique, compelling content and sending it out on the proper channels in a timely way, businesses differentiate themselves from competitors and start conversations. This is the evolution of traditional marketing in Jan's eyes, "Similar goals, different channels, more interactive customer behavior with a greater willingness to participate." 

It Doesn't End When You Get the Customer in the Door

Engagement doesn't end at the point of sale. It is a conversation that needs to be continued throughout the customer journey. We've all heard the statistics of the higher rate of return from retaining customers than acquiring. Jan agrees with this strategy:

Social media is a key customer service channel; if handled correctly, social media can become one of the key drivers for companies' positive reputation growth or product advocacy and savings on call center costs. Social media can and in many instances already do play a role in acquiring new customers. However, before any brand goes down the route of acquisition, we'd recommend to get the basics right and ensure current customers are being attended to at least as much as new ones."

As for the future, it is just becoming clearer that businesses who ignore social channels are doing it at their own risk. If you want to be where your customers are, you will develop a social media strategy (if you don't already have one) right quick. I'll give Jan the final word:

Given that social media channels are still growing and more and more people are connecting, it's only logical that these channels will be more and more interesting for brands. Any successful marketer or communications professional has to have social media skills simply because the vast majority of their target audience spends a significant amount of time on social networks."

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Discussion Point: From Data to Decisions - Real-Time Analytics Support the Customer Experience

Every organization captures data — social media analytics, customer interactions, website traffic and other metrics, the list goes on. That the amount of data collected is growing exponentially is no surprise, that technologies are emerging every day to help us capture and analyze this data is also no surprise. But how are these analytics and data support tools changing to help better support the customer experience and what can we expect from these technologies in the next few years? That's the question we asked our esteemed panel in today's Discussion Point.

 The Question

How are analytics and decision support tools changing to meet CXM/WEM demands today & what key changes do you foresee in the next two to three years?

The Responses

Cathy McKnight — Digital Clarity Group

A founding partner and Principal Analyst with Digital Clarity Group, Cathy has a passion for working with clients to maximize their potential for success and profitability by helping them find the right-fit digital content management technology that will increase employee engagement and efficiencies. As an analyst, consultant, strategist, speaker and writer on topics related to digital content technology, employee engagement, and social media, Cathy is a strong advocate of the concepts of communities both within and around the enterprise.

Until quite recently, "analytics" in the context of WCM was almost exclusively about what was happening with the website itself: How many visitors arrived? What pages were viewed? For how long? This data was rarely available immediately nor did it need to be, since it influenced decisions and changes that would be implemented over days, weeks, or months. With the shift to CXM/WEM, analytics need to deliver insights — rapid and actionable insights — into the profiles and behavior of the visitors to the web and the performance of the content assets. So, in the first instance, it is very important for end users to understand this significant transformation in the way vendors talk about "analytics."

That said, collecting large amounts of data on behavior and performance is relatively easy. And analyzing that data, with the right tool, shouldn’t be difficult. Mining the insight and value from the data is the hard part. CXM/WEM data is now largely a real-time commodity and real-time data must be analyzed with extraordinary speed to create maximum value. The analytics and decision support tools have to become better at finding and identifying the useful nuggets almost a quickly as the data is being generated and captured, and then being able to integrate and merge that real-time data with historical and supplemental data from across the organization to provide the full value it has to offer.

Different emerging channels require different types of analysis, so analytics tools will have to adapt to accommodate, understand and integrate new channels as they evolve, appear and are adopted by the consumer. As the value of analytics ultimately lies in its ability to inform correct decisions that produce business value, feedback and verification features will become increasingly important. For example, the ability to define key performance indicators (KPIs) within the tools and base both real time content deployment decisions as well as strategic customer engagement strategies on the measurements across various channels and audience segments, will be an important functional feature. 

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Content Strategy: Keep Pretending Conversions Don't Matter

Did you know you are bombarded by 5,000 messages a day? And that it takes seven to nine interactions with a brand before you even begin to recognize it? Because of this overwhelming onslaught, are you only seeking recommendations from those within your social networks?

If you’re responsible for marketing, this change in how customers connect with your messaging leaves you wondering how your brand is going to poke through, make an impact and, most importantly, close a sale.

For Those Who Think They Aren't Selling

What did you just say, Ahava? Close a sale? I’m not in the business of sales. I market a hospital or I market a university or I represent a not-for-profit. We are not in the business of sales.

Seriously? You don’t think you are in the business of sales? Oh, but you are. Why do you keep producing all that content? The reason you do it is for one reason only: the goal of content is to convert prospects to customers.

You may not have an actual physical product — I’ll give you that. You are still selling — your charity’s worth, your hospital’s unique treatments and services, your university’s educational excellence. Content is the primary tactic we use to engage and educate, which may lead to a donation, an appointment or an application.

Once you accept that the goal of content is to keep moving people through your pipeline, you can do a much better job at constructing their content experience. Controlling the experience comes from truly understanding the value content can provide for customers.

Controlling the Content Experience

What are the hallmarks of terrific content?

Terrific content does several things to convert prospects to customers. Outstanding content:

1. Corresponds to real-life needs: “I want to find a charity I connect with so I can donate. Reading about all the wonderful work this charity does with developmentally disabled adults inspired me to give.”

2. Educates: “My father is elderly and has started to forget things. Is this a normal sign of aging or do I need to consider the possibility that he may be developing dementia or Alzheimer’s? Is there a geriatric practice at my community’s hospital? Do they have someone I can talk to about this? Looking at their website and their checklist of normal signs of aging made me realize we need an appointment.”

3. Entertains and builds a story: “I’ve been looking at several universities and I know I want to study accounting and business. Watching the video the accounting principles class made with their professor about understanding the difference between cash basis versus accrual basis accounting made me want to attend that program.”

When you produce content with the goal of moving customers through your pipeline, you ease the challenges inherent in creating valuable content. Connect with your customer’s needs so that you produce content that informs and educates. Don’t forget to entertain prospects with great storytelling — it’s almost always the emotional connection they need to move them across the line to customers that, yes, drive revenue.

Editor's Note: To read more of Ahava's tips on content strategy:

— Content Strategy: Don't Ditch Your FAQ Page

About the Author

Based in the Washington, D.C. metro area, Ahava Leibtag is a Web content strategist and writer. She leads AHA Media Group, a Web and content consulting firm operating since 2005. She authors the blog Online it ALL Matters.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Touchpoint Dashboard Launches Customer Journey Mapping Tool

How do you track customers’ interactions with your company? Touchpoint Dashboard has released an online customer journey mapping tool to do just that.

The Wichita, Kansas-based company said that the software is the first SaaS application of its kind. It allows a company to map all customer touchpoints, visualize how customers feel, and analyze where problems exist.

Touchpoints, Attributes

By using this mapping, Touchpoint said, a business can see where it fails to meet customer expectations, how that failure is affecting the bottom line, and what activities are costing the most in terms of loyalty, retention and profitability.

The Journey Map shows a grid where columns represent the customer journey or lifecycle, rows indicate company departments and the squares at the intersections are the touchpoints. Clicking on a touchpoint shows its attributes or details. Each one can be scored to determine cost, impact and ROI. Its colors can indicate touch type such as phone, email, in-person or web.

Charts and reports can be generated that either summarize or detail the map and the attributes. Filters allow for touchpoints to be isolated by their attributes. In a pain point analysis of the same touchpoints, columns indicate importance to customer, rows indicate cost to fix, and colors indicate source of the pain point.

Multiple Users

The online application allows multiple users to participate in the mapping process without the need for additional licenses — according to the company, this is a key difference between Touchpoint and other mapping tools. Dashboard views of information and reports can be customized for specific needs such as presentations to executives or departmental teams.

Touchpoint co-founder Anne Cramer said in a statement that industry analysts and consultants are promoting customer journey mapping as an effective tool but “they are telling us that they are frustrated with the inefficiencies associated with traditional mapping methods”.  Her company, which began as a project to make journey mapping easier than it was on consultant-led customer experience projects, was filling a need for “an easy-to-use journey mapping tool that delivers action-oriented business intelligence".

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com