Digital Marketing - How to use it to sell more

A new trend we’ve observed is the increasing sophistication of shoppers using their mobile device to inform shopping decisions and facilitate retail purchases. As the behavior of Innovators tips over into the mainstream, retailers should expect to see more in-store comparisons and use of technology such as QR code scanning.

OgilvyOne and OgilvyAction conducted research among 1,500 shoppers in the US, UK, and Singapore revealing that Innovators are advanced users of mobile phones in the retail environment, foreshadowing mainstream consumer behavior*:

• Not surprisingly, 85% of Innovators searched Google from a phone while in a store to get information on a product. Already 24% of the Early Majority are doing this, with the number increasing to 50% of the Early Majority who own Smart Phones
• 77% of Innovators scanned a barcode or QR code with a mobile phone while 19% of the Early Majority are already doing this, increasing to 40% of the Early Majority who own Smart Phones

Click image for UStream recording of conference

Last week I moderated a panel titled “Social Selling: Using the Power of Friends to Boost the Bottom Line “ at MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit #MPSMIS. My panel was a very interesting mix of marketers, such as Michael Aki from Gap stores and Richard Armour from Gamestop, and representatives from companies that provide some of the underlying technologies, like Henry Wong from Adgregate, David Dowd from Buddy Media and Ben Straley from Meteor Solutions. @Adgregate @DGDowd @MeteorSolutions

I knew it would be a great panel when an earlier keynote, Lou Kerner, Social Media and Internet Analyst at equity research firm Wedbush Securities, described Buddy Media and Adgregate as, “It’s like 1996 all over again. Zynga is the new Eletronic Arts, Twitter is the new Hotmail, BuddyMedia is the new Doubleclick, and Adgregate Markets is the new GSI Commerce.”

Kerner also said, “We are still in incredibly early days, if social media was television, ‘I Love Lucy’ hasn’t even aired yet.” Panelist Henry Wong later echoed his comments, saying we’re in inning one or two of a long game, and there will be lots of lessons to be learned along the way.

Facebook seems to be the platform everyone is rallying around because of its broad reach and data-rich connection to the consumer. That acceptance is speeding adoption in the industry as few want to be on the bleeding edge.

One theme that came up when starting up a social selling program is to set the right expectations with management. To succeed, there need to be metrics and the right level of investment. However, those metrics need to be reasonable or there’s the risk that these early learning attempts could be labeled failures. As for the level of investment, Richard from Gamestop said, “Opening a store on Facebook isn’t just like a store…It’s a real store.” Henry observed that this implies that resources spent merchandising, promoting, etc. to a normal dotcom store will also be required for a Facebook store. The ‘build it and they will come’ mentality just won’t work. But we’d better keep in mind Lou Kerner’s advice – “Whatever it costs you to get a Facebook fan today will be much more in the future – so get ‘em NOW.”

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Zappos.com is one of the most successful e-commerce sites, with more than a billion in sales. It owes much of its success to a unique culture of “delivering WOW through service” that CEO Tony Hsieh spells out in his book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose. He shares with his thoughts on selling in the 21st century with Todd Herman, winner of OgilvyOne’s The World’s Greatest Salesperson contest.

Todd Herman: Can you define for us the characteristics of great salespeople?

Tony Hsieh: For us, authenticity is very important. I hesitate a little to use the word because it’s starting to get overused, but we found that it makes a difference for our customers, employees and vendors. There are so many examples of a company that says one thing and that doesn’t reflect in what they’re doing. For us, we do what we say we’ll do and it’s all about customer service. It’s not just a marketing slogan – we want to provide the best customer service and experience.

Beyond authenticity, what else have you employed at Zappos?

I prefer the term “being real.” But on so many levels, it’s not just providing great service, but having employees who are not here just for a paycheck.  From a cultural perspective, we want our employees to just be themselves. In so much of “corporate America,” people are a different person at home than in the office. They leave part of themselves at home and become a robot in the office, whether dealing with customers or each other. We try to foster an environment where people are comfortable being themselves because that’s when true friendships, creativity and great ideas form. You can really connect with customers on very human level. More… »

Real estate agents and brokers have been some of the earliest adopters of social media, which isn’t surprising that they’re entrepreneurs whose success is built on being well connected in their communities. But for every agent engaged with Twitter and Foursquare, there are many more that have yet to take the plunge.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Matt Gentile, Director of P.R. and Social Media for Century 21 Real Estate (@mattgentile) about how brokers and agents are using social media, what they’ve been learning, and what he sees for the future. With over 121,000 agents and more than 8,000 independent offices, Century 21 has a big challenge.

Phil Buehler: Can you tell us about the evolution of social media at Century 21?

Matt Gentile: I didn’t grow up with social media in the 80’s, I grew up working in more of a traditional public relations environment I was trained to look at everything as a channel or way to disseminate messages. Initially, I saw social media as another means to send a corporate message, which I must admit, was probably a fairly cynical way to look at social media in the beginning.

In 2005, I  developed, what was at the time probably one of the first training manuals for utilizing social media for real estate marketing and recruiting with the Director of Training for the company I worked for at the time.  It’s amazing to think about just how new social media was at the time and how influential it would become as a component of marketing.  The guide leveraged LinkedIn for recruiting purposes for our brokers. We encouraged our brokers and agents to create short videos that told a story about a home they had listed and how to post a video on YouTube.  To provide details about their communities that consumers would be interested in. It was basic, but innovative for the time.

What about using social media for marketing?

In terms of true customer outreach, through social media channels or developing an audience, that wasn’t something that had been optimized when I came on board in 2008 as Director of PR and Social Media. In 2009, I began to focus on the question, “Who is the audience that we should be targeting, instead of what channel are we using to push messages.” More… »

Fascinating conversation between 140 Character Conference founder Jeff Pulver and the manager of a Verizon Wireless store in the small town of Hutchinson, Kansas. She tells Jeff that how people shop for a phone is completely different – in the past, they asked about minutes and plans, and now it’s about what social applications they can use. Again, getting out of the big city to a small town where community is very important shows how social media is going to push smartphones past the tipping point.

In July 2009, Best Buy launched Twelpforce, a customer service channel on Twitter with the handle @twelpforce. They’ve answered over 35,000 questions so far and are an example of how social media are being used to build relationships with customers and sell products.

Phil Buehler, Head of Planning for OgilvyOne (@pwbuehler), recently spoke to John Bernier, Social and Emerging Media Manager for Best Buy (@bernierjohn) about the challenges of using social media in a large organization, how they measure success, what they’ve been learning, and where they’re headed.

Planning Twelpforce

Phil Buehler: We’re seeing that launching social media programs in a large organization is particularly challenging. How did Twelpforce come about?

John Bernier: The overriding principle here was tied to one of our brand promises, which was to help the customer know what we know as fast as we know it. We thought about how could we best represent ourselves, and had observed that the Twitter platform didn’t lend itself well to direct selling or one to many messaging. So we looked at our pool of assets and said, “Our employees know stuff, we can share stuff and we can do it quickly.” The more we share about the products, the more we can demonstrate our actual knowledge and the value we can bring to the equation. Giving away this knowledge sounded like a radical idea at the time, but it has proven itself to be worthwhile and valuable for customers.

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Predicting the future of social media is a challenge. Donald Norman, cognitive scientist and author of The Design of Future Things once told us, “The easy part of prediction is the technology. The hard part is the social impact; the effect upon the lives, living patterns, and work habits of people; the impact upon society and culture.” But as science fiction writer William Gibson’s said, “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

To get a glimpse at the future, we observed a town of innovators who embrace new media to reveal what might be in store for the rest of us. That town is Blacksburg in Southwest Virginia.

Most large brands have retail locations that are not yet tapped into the social media at this local level, choosing instead to manage social media campaigns nationally. The challenge is helping their local sales forces to use social media to sell by strengthening their connections locally. In Blacksburg, instead of using social and mobile media to create a “virtual community,” residents are using it to connect face-to-face with friends and business owners in restaurants, stores, movie theaters, and even at the local pool. It’s as if the sidewalk and front porch are returning, and people are coming out of their living rooms and backyards.

Phil Buehler, OgilvyOne’s Head of Planning and a pioneer in the use of ethnographies in advertising (@pwbuehler), visited Blacksburg in 1996, when it was first “plugged in.” He recently returned to see what this innovative community could teach us and reunited with Professor Andrea Kavanaugh, former research director of the Blacksburg Electronic Village and now Interim Director of the Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech. Together they interviewed many of the town’s early adopters and community leaders to learn how they’re using social and mobile media in their lives and businesses.

Link to the full report is below the video

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