Social media has revolutionized the way customers engaged brands, and how brands influenced behaviors. Many see opportunities; others fear disruption.
At last month’s CMO Innovation Summit, a panel of social media proponents debated on the myths surrounding social media. Chaired by Greg Paull, principal and co-founder of R3, panelists argued for a change in mindsets.
Where big lies lie
“For me the biggest myth is that people who engage in social media are somehow comparable with the other people in terms of audience metrics in DP or print. It’s not,” said Chris Baker, the managing director of Totem Media.
Baker noted that measurements are not a means to an end for every social campaign. In some cases, trying to measure may even divert a campaign from its true objectives.
“Measurements though tend to get us to narrowing down things when companies at this stage of the social is fairly new, it takes the focus and shifts it away from interesting for the audiences,” he added.
Rina Hiranand, the strategy director for Social@Ogilvy, a big proponent of measurement, noted measurements need to be a company-wide concern—not just a CMO’s job.
“It should be planted in the organization and become everybody’s responsibility. It is a conversation you should have every day,” she said.
Drew Calin, who is head of enterprise at HK & SEA, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions took a different tack by suggesting that you cannot comprehensively test social.
“I think that is a flawed mentality. The biggest myth buster for me is to see very differently where social fits in your customer journey cycle and not within itself,” said Calin.
He sees social media as part of a company journey. He joined Baker in highlighting that social media should be seen as part of a bigger picture, and not the only picture.
Hiranand went further, suggesting social media should also be part of a customer’s journey. “So people need to think what social’s role across the journey and what efficiencies are you driving through social versus other forms of engagement. That is a metric that your CEO will care about.”
Social is not sales
Greg took on a subject that many CMOs scratch their heads often on—can social lead to sales.
“Not all social should lead to sales. It really depends on the brand,” said Baker. He highlighted his experience with Disney in China where they were looking to improve the awareness of Star Wars.
“For those who are concerned sales, we need to make sure that they have the infrastructure to link to an outcome. Essentially, you need to have a clear place where consumers can land,” he added.
Calin noted that social media should be seen in a broader context: “You have the ability to understand the mindset of the audience in the context of their current experience,” he said.
It is the reason why people are using platform like LinkedIn’s. “It is about audience intelligence. The relative experience is important to sales. But if you step in to social with a sales execution, that is an error. Social media is a behavior platform, about relationships, and all about value exchanges,” he said.
Hiranand, who highlighted Coca Cola and Lego as good examples of driving overall sales through social, said it is first important to have a model to track.
“Let’s take a step back, what does social media do for everybody? At its core, it is behavior enabled by technology. When someone recommends a brand you are impacted by the recommendation. That’s the benefit. If you just want to do sales, you are missing on the core of what social media is about, which is about two-way engagement,” she said.
Hiranand also sees social media about outcomes—not just sales. “You are changing a customer’s view by talking about what they are talking about. So yes, social media must drive outcomes, but it does not have to be sales.”
Embrace and learn from negativity
One of the biggest risk about social media is negative comments. Just look at the furor surrounding Lancôme’s decision to cancel a concert featuring Canto-pop star Denise Ho Wan-yee. This was prompted from calls by Chinese netizens to boycott the brand after the state-backed Global times linked Ho to pro-democracy thoughts.
“The sad thing about the Lancôme case is that they should have seen this coming. We have had two years of incidents particularly with luxury brands that stemmed from the way they treat mainland consumers and local consumers,” said Hiranand.
She highlighted the urgent need for brands to have a protocol in managing a crisis.
“Too many brands focus on the reaction. You need to have a streamlined team who should be quickly and efficiently manage it with the right people. You should also have internal protocols for learning from [such incidents].”
A big problem in handling negative social media feed is who actually manages the platforms.
“If you outsource your responsibility to an agency, then it is no longer effective. Why? The skillset required is client servicing. You need to be build customer service as part of your community management. And you need to manage it today,” said Hiranand, who noted that customer expectations have changed and want a response within an hour.
“We need to start thinking like customers and less about marketers. The roles have changed,” added Calin.
Time to get real
Another risk lies in a disconnect in the technology reality. With CMOs implementing customer-facing social media campaigns using third party solutions, CTOs are feeling uneasy that many are not integrated with their own infrastructure.
“We often see a great social media campaign go out and CMOs wanting to measure it, and the CTOs are coming to us and saying it is not [integrated] with the rest of the they are doing,” said Ben Stobart, VP of marketing and portfolio at BT AMEA.
“At the moment, CMOs want to do audience engagement and CTOs will say I keep the plane in the air. So you have two different agendas. The biggest challenge is that the CTOs are under pressure, yet people are talking about Fourth Industrial Revolution,” he added.
Stobart sees this as a huge risk. “A lot of businesses out there have very silo-ed capabilities. I think CMOs and CTOs need to come together and make the customer journey as part of both of their agendas. CMOs need to find out from CTOs the digital possibility of the business or your deficiencies,” he said.
Source: enterpriseinnovation
