WOMMA DC 2006 Archive
Commentary by blog and social media consultant Josh Hallett on the use of blogs for public relations, media, marketing, communication & branding and from time-to-time the unsolicited opinion.
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Pinny Gniwisch, Founder/EVP Marketing, Ice.com and Anil Dash, VP, Moveable Type Professional Network, Six Apart, led a breakout session to a packed room on how to create/use blogs for WOM. Lots of interest in this topic.
Pinny started the session with a humorous look back at the Internet past, from the early adopters to boo.com to the rise of blogs. Pinny highlighted the November Forbes article - Attach of the Blogs. Immediately after that article he created a blog. Of course there is a blog overload, but if you post consistently and honestly you will build an audience.
Flog: Pinny provided a quick review of the fake Wal-Mart blog scandal. You need to be honest with your audience.
At Diamond.com they created a blog called Sparkle Like the Stars. The blog discusses what jewelry the stars are wearing and shows comparable products they offer. Traffic has been great, around 6-7K uniques per day. Another blog they've created is JustAskLeslie.com which answers questions about jewelry.
You need to keep your blog fresh, post at least three times per week. Many of our fans follow us via RSS. The blog has also generated a number of press.
Next up was Anil, he decided to skip the slides and just spoke from the podium. Anil did a brief overview of how SixApart used blogs to build their business. Anil started his blog back in 1999, and thought he was late to the game, but then these other 50 million people show up and you realize you're ahead of the curve.
Until a year ago they had never purchased an advertisement. They built business by using the tools they create. They experimented on a number of different things, and screwed up a lot.
The power of self-expression is a powerful thing. There is sense of empowerment with self-publishing tools.
Anybody that says bloggers are (insert adjective), i.e. evil, have no life, etc...don't know what they're talking about. There are so many people blogging that it's impossible to segment or classify them.
More and more people are creating public blogs and personal blogs. Ultimately it's just a tool. There are a number of business cases that blogs can apply to. There are people building journalistic blogs and of course you might want to reach out to them, but the majority of blogs are personal. How do you reach out to them?
Working with General Motors it was amazing to see how a big company could work so quickly. Yes they are a large company and they have lots of red tape, so if you think you have problems launching a blog, it's not that hard. If the US Government can do it, so can you.
All that content you send out via e-mail newsletters disappears....it's gone once it's sent. Why not take that same content and put in on a blog? You now have the opportunity to build relationships and commentary around that content.
Think about a blog as a content repository. Often you have people creating content in your office now, why not publish it via a blog.
There are so many times that Anil will be writing an e-mail or some other content and he'll think, "Why not publish this to the blog?"
In Boeing's case, why create a blog for a plane? There is nobody reading this blog that will ever buy this plane. But what they found was the content that normally would be buried in press kits was now available online. Aviation enthusiasts and travelers visited the blog and saw the new interior of the Boeing 787 - Dreamliner. Carriers actually saw demand from passengers who wanted to fly in the plane. Carriers began to increase orders.
OK, let's get passionate....or perhaps just learn from passionate fans. A panel consisting of: Kathleen Hessert, President, Sports Media Challenge, Daphne Kwon, CEO, Expo TV and Jake McKee, Lead Samurai, Big in Japan talked about the lessons they've learned from passionate fans.
Kathleen was the first to speak and focussed on sports. Kathleen's firm focuses on athletes and sports franchises, i.e NASCAR, Shaquille O'Neal, Peyton Manning, etc. Their audience are fans, so they study fans quite a bit. Fans are passionate about the things they're interested in, so they're ripe for WOM.
There are a number of fan loyalty levels: Sport, Conference, Team, Athlete. For example some people are Brady Quinn fans, others might just be a fan of Notre Dame. These loyalty levels create a number of opportunities for teams/athletes to interact with their fans.
Fans trust fellow fans before marketers. As such, they're measuring the cross-links among sports blogs to track what they're interested in. Of course fans love to talk about their teams and the rivalries between teams.
Some sports get the fact that fans are the customers, others don't. Fans generate media for sports. However fans are easily swayed by influencers.
Next up was Daphne from ExpoTV. Expo is a relatively new company, their core focus is to help companies build better UGC videos. One of their products is Videopinions. Videopinions allows users to easily create video-based reviews of products. They've built up a library of over 20,000 segments.
One of the big issues is making sure the consumers don't feel exploited, after all they are building content around their work. How do you make the consumers feel validated? People that submit the videos feel a sense of empowerment since they're sharing
A new distribution program for them is Video on Demand (VOD). They selected 40 of their Videopnions and compiled them into a Holiday Shopping Guide that aired on VOD.
The last presenter was Jake from Big in Japan. Jake wanted to spent most of his time discussing some topics that he finds himself constantly addressing. Jake used to work at LEGO and he showed a photo of a LEGO event and asked, "Can anybody tell who works for LEGO and who does not." The audience couldn't. The photo was a great example of a company working closely with the fans.
First point: Everybody goes home happy. How do you define happy though? Consumers and companies both have their definition of 'happy' but they can be balanced.
Second point: Control through participation, not directive. With community, when you participate you do have some level of control since you are interacting with your customers/fans.
Recently LEGO sent their CEO to a small fan event. Some questioned the ROI of sending a highly paid executive to talk to 200 fans. However, those 200 fans are a representation of the thousands of fans out there that can't attend. Those 200 will quickly spread the message via blogs, message boards, etc. Often it's the sense of individual communication, not necessarily individual communication itself.
Third point: They're not weird because they like you. Too often companies begin to question the passion of their fans...why?
Fourth point: Ego: Lose yours, play to theirs. When you step back and really think about them, they will see that and appreciate that.
Firth point: Join the cause. Find out what their issues are and help them.
Sixth point: Start what you can finish Fans don't think in terms of projects or budget cycles so you need to adapt your programs to extend beyond traditional business thinking.
After our 'fun' lunch it was back to work with the breakout sessions. As a PR/Hyperlocal blogger and a consultant to traditional media this session really interested me. Are bloggers journalists?
Yes the question has been asked and debated hundreds of times on panels around the world, but my interest is seeing the response/questions from the audience. Discussing the subject today was a great panel including:
David Armon, COO, PR Newswire
Julia Hood, Editor-in-Chief, PRWeek
Henry Copeland, CEO, Blogads.com
Peter Himler, Flatiron Communications
David served as moderator of the panel and opened with some brief intros from the panelists. During Henry's intro he said, "Outside is the new inside." and that he enjoys coming 'inside' to tell that story.
David surveyed the audience to get a perspective on who was in the room. It was a great mix in the room of agencies, corporations, bloggers, journalists and academia.
Q. Are bloggers journalists?
Julia: If she had to do it all over again she might not have gone back to journalism school, she'd be a blogger. She thinks the impetus for bloggers and journalists is to have a voice. Journalists will say they are different because they are objective and have editor...all of those things are debatable. Thomas Paine is the first blogger, Julia though she had that idea first, but no, plenty of other people have made that connection. If the impetus is the same than perhaps the responsibilities are the same.
Peter: I feel they are journalists, but of the citizen variety. The lines of traditional media are blurring, entertainment is mixing with hard news, etc. Media needs to take a look and take stock of where they are at. He feels that blogs are subjective to some degree. There is of course an echo chamber, but it works both ways. Many times it's a AP or Reuters story that is discussed in blogs, but what we're seeing now is bloggers post a story idea and it's picked up by the traditional media.
Henry: I'll be the outsider. He doesn't think it's an issue until substantive words get used. Some of the words used are originator and legitimacy. When we apply those words then we have a debate. The people reading blogs feel the information they're getting out of blogs is valuable. Sure there is spin, but it's obvious and the people reading them understand this.
David talked about how PRNewswire selects bloggers to be included in their programs. The blog must have original content, it must be influential (more than 1000 unique links via Technorati), it must fit the taxonomy of their business and the blog must not be obscene.
Peter: Do bloggers get credentials? What we're seeing now with bloggers, is that client still want to manage messages. The holy grail of the blogosphere is that we can select bloggers that target a specific topic or audience. However a Z-list blogger can still break news, but they may only have limited space at a particular event. If you're managing a news event, you don't have to let everybody in, this doesn't just apply to bloggers, this also applies to journalists.
Henry: Some of the prolific bloggers are just being bombarded by PR flacks. Things are changing, 18 months ago many bloggers would feel flattered if somebody pitched them, now they're being overwhelmed.
Julia: Welcome to the world of being a journalist. You get what you ask for.
Peter: You don't pitch a blog, you build a conversation with a blog.
Q: Julia, you said earlier that bloggers and journalists have the same responsibility, can you elaborate on what those are?
Julia: I don't think they should have the same responsibilities, it's just a responsibility.
(getting behind.....the conversation is too good....)
Cross posted from the WOMMA Blog. The standard live-blogging caveats apply....excuse any initial typos.
WOMMA always comes up with some great lunch-time speakers. Back in January of this year at WOMBAT we had Scott Ginsberg...you know the guy with the name tag. This year was no exception with the lunch activity being led by Doug Walker, Managing Director of the World Rock Paper Scissors Society (are you a member?)
How is Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) relevant to a WOM audience? The entire RPS program is very WOM based. There are four basic principles:
Authority: The web site was stated in 1995 and they made the claim that they were the authority of RPS. Soon they became the authority. Other cultures began to share their versions of the game. This combined with a message board built up an amazing RPS content base. Soon there were competitions based upon RPS sprouting up.
In 2003 they had the opportunity to write a book. The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide.
Mutation: Other opportunities soon evolved. Competitions, t-shirts...a brand formed. Internally they all wore many hats. In 2004 FOX Sports produced a TV show based upon the RPS competition. Now there is competition in the organization space. Have you heard of the USARPS?
The question now becomes how to make it relevant. What's funny is that at least once a year there is a story that involves RPS, that gives them the opportunity to insert themselves into the story. RPS will often provide commentary around these stories.
Participation: RPS takes people off the streets and makes them athletes. That's a powerful thing. They treat it very seriously. When there is something this silly and you treat that seriously there is a great deal of humor in that. They make the winners C-level celebrities and book TV appearances and other 'events' for them. They would often turn journalists into players, this would evolve into great first-person stories.
RPS also provided attendees the tools to run their own event, in essence extending the brand.
Accretion: Once a few people get involved it continues to build and WOM is a result.
Recently RPS launched an article titled 'How to Beat Anyone at Rock, Paper, Scissors'. Social media sites, specifically Digg and Fark listed the entry and it ended up sending a tremendous amount of traffic to the RPS. This of course blew up their web server. They estimated that the outage cost them around 100,000 possible impressions.
Three days after the launch of the article, Google showed 18,600 unique links to the site.
Doug wrapped up his presentation and then introduced the group exercise. The entire audience would take part in a RPS tournament. Each attendee was given $4 in RPS currency and started by challenging their tablemates and then as they collect RPS dollars move around the room.
For the next 10 minutes the WOMMA conference looked like a kindergarten playground.
The goal was to get four finalists on stage that would battle it out for the WOMMA RPS crown.
Becky Engel from Edelman was the winner! (shown above)
Cross posted from the WOMMA Blog. The standard live-blogging caveats apply....excuse any initial typos.
After hearing all about the award-winning WOM campaigns, attendees quickly re-convened for a panel discussion on the loss of control. On the panel were:
Gary Stein, Director of Strategy, Ammo Marketing
Rob Gould, Partner, Porter Novelli
Mary Engle, Associate Director for Advertising Practices, Federal Trade Commission
Washington D.C. might be the best town to hold a panel on this topic since politicians are often accused to 'Not getting it'.
First up was Rob Gould. Rob claimed to be net immigrant and not a net native. He's a social psychologist by trade so his roles is to look at how people interact with advertising/marketing. It's not just about control and consumers. People have a broader role than just being a consumer.
Many years ago he was asked about CB Radio, in many ways it's similar to what's going on today. There is a desire for social connection, expression and freedom that drove the CB movement.
We're leaving the era of vertical influence, mass media is giving way to other forms of media. Why do we not here that many jingles any more? What we're entering is a period of horizontal influence. There are four boosters within the horizontal movement.
Power Booster 1 - The ability to share and generate information
Power Booster 2 - Social networking
Power Booster 3 - Consensus Building (yes there is the Wisdom of crowds, but there is also the tyranny of the echo chamber)
Power Booster 4 - Mobilization (we can take our consensus and run with it)
Next up was Gary Stein. The title of his deck was 'Trustiness'. He was looking at what people trust and why they trust those things.
WOM is the folklore of consumer culture. Unfortunately consumers don't trust advertisers and advertisers don't trust consumers. Advertisers don't think that consumers will want to sit though the ads, and of course consumers just want advertisers to not lie. We as marketers can't lie, since there are so many bloggers and other sources out there that will out the truth.
How can we begin to measure trust? Gary presented an equation that possible represents trust (photo coming soon).
Trust will drive confidence for decisions, confidence drives action. People will forgive, lapses in competence , but not benevolence. If we as organizations apologize quickly for errors, we can be forgiven.
This past year there have been three people that have tested our trust.
First up is Floyd Landis, (if you don't know the story look it up). What Floyd did is open up his case to the world.
Adam, the Reuters reporter in Second Life. They are reporting in a virtual realm, they are looking for stories and facts. Can this be done?
LonelyGirl15, she is the direct opposite of the Reuters reporter. She went into a real/trustworthy space and created something fake. She was quickly outed, but it exposed a new dimension.
Mary Engle with the FTC was the last of the panelists. What does the FTC have to do with WOM? Well they regulate advertising so it obviously impacts the audience. What the law requires is that all advertising be honest and not be misleading. Organizations can't make false claims in advertising. They look at things from the standpoint of a reasonable consumer. However many times an ad can be interpreted in a number of ways by different consumers. If one of those interpretations is misleading then the ad
Recently they had a complaint about a WOM campaign. The gist of the complaint dealt with consumers being paid to endorse a product and then not disclosing that relationship. There must be a disclosure. The guidelines for this type of activity were already covered under testimonials,
The use of children and teens in WOM. The concern was that the use of children was unethical. While the FTC is concerned with this, they can only look at things from a legal aspect and not from an ethical standpoint. The ethical question is something that WOMMA can/should handle. Obviously there should be disclosure on behalf of the teen/child if payment is being made. One issue that has legal precedent is the targeting/approaching of children under 13 online.
To sum things up, Mary said, "If you are paying consumers to buzz about your product you must disclose that."
At the end a question was raised, did LonleyGirl15 take away some of the trust of the medium which is something that impacts everybody? Gary said yes.
Cross posted from the WOMMA Blog. The standard live-blogging caveats apply....excuse any initial typos.
After a day focussed on research and too much math at the WOMMA Research Symposium, the WOMMA Summit kicked off this morning with an opening keynote by Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman of AOL. Notice that link on Ted's name...yep he's a blogger.
Things are always in a state of change. When Ted first got online there were less than a million, now there are over a billion.
Ted opened by saying that we're dealing with a new breed of consumer. The needs of consumers are shifting. In his own life he spends more time IM'ing with his son than talking with him in person.
How they consume things is also changing. Consumers expect things to be:
- Free
- On Demand
- Mashed Up
- Shared
- Raw and Authentic
What we're seeing is new companies looking to build business/marketing models around things that people want for free. That's a challenge.
Years ago there used to be event TV, everybody would make a date to watch a specific show. Today, people buy DVDs of TV shows, allowing them to watch what they want, when they want. If you would have told a TV exec a decade ago that DVDs would become a major delivery channel for them they would have laughed at you.
Ted then talked about a project his son developed that mashed-up a number of sources surrounding NHL teams. This was something that a group of high school students dreamed and developed. He thinks it rivals some of the major media sources from a content standpoint.
Another common thread is segmentation. There are four categories of growth that are astounding:
- Latinos
- African Americans
- Greying of America
- Youth
The adoption rate of technology by Latinos is astounding. AOL launched a series of Latino-specific tools/portals to tap into this growth.
No big news here....most people live abroad. Within the US market there are around 100 million unique households connected, this is nothing compared to other markets around the globe. Back to the US though, so many properties are fighting over those 100 million households, looking to pull out an additional 3-4 million impressions. The growth markets are overseas.
Ted thinks that many US firms are sub-optimized to deal with the overseas markets. If his kids were young in school again hey would make sure they were spending plenty of time studying Mandarin and math.
The Internet can make people happy, let's look at a few key elements:
- Relationships
- Community
- Self-Expression
- Giving Back
- Pursuing a Higher Calling
The Internet enhances all of these. Think about your buddy list, Ted often tells people that the number of 'friends' they have in their buddy list is directly related to their happiness.
Self-expression can easily be seen in blogs. The estimated 55 million blogs show that people want to express themselves. Then via their blogrolls and links they're building communities.
Now let's talk about how WOM and this next generation of consumer are changing marketing. The media business is shifting, it's broken. Businesses that have existed for 200+ years and losing customers. When Ted first came to the DC area the Washington Post had 800,000 subscribers, today they have 600,000. In that same time the advertising rates are increasing. Traditional media is offering less and less and is charging more and more.
The network effect is also very powerful. A single voice can suddenly have a tremendous impact. When was the last time you saw Newsweek comment on a Time news article? They don't. The new consumer has no problems interconnecting in perhaps non-traditional ways.
Consumers now see 28% of their media online, however advertisers have only moved 6% of their budgets towards online. There are some industries that see this shift and are adapting well. The Internet is a major force for the auto manufacturers. In Detroit when the big 3 develop their marketing plans it starts with the Internet and then builds out elsewhere. It's not 'new media' it's becoming 'the media'.
Marketing isn't just to people any more - you have to market to algorithms:
- Google
- Blog Search
- Car Diagnostic System
- Amazon Recommendation Engines
Ted told the story of how his car's diagnostic system told him he needed new tires. He called the dealership and went that afternoon to get new tires. After he left he realized that he's watched over a million hours of TV in his life and seen thousands of tire commercials but they never made him lift a finger. But suddenly his car tells him he needs new tires and he can't get to the dealership fast enough.
The new tools are harnessing the wisdom of crowds. Google doesn't tell you what a good result is, it's all the people out there that link to a resource that determine that it's the best result.
At any point in time there will be between 8-10 million users online via AIM.
Companies are learning, and must embrace the consumer:
- Listen - be open
- Create good products with virtue
- Make sharing easy
- Mirror the community
- Be authentic
- Be humble
The seven (Web 2.0) virtues:
- Generosity
- Sharing
- Politeness
- Openness
- Communication
- Respect for individuals
- Diligence
The following is cross-posted from the WOMMA Research blog:
The last session I attended was led by Harald Eltvedt from Informative. Harald presented some findings from some research that Informative had conducted related to advocates.
WOM is about people. You can't motivate WOM until the advocates are identified. There is a difference between advocates and customers. Often the largest advocate may not be the largest customer from a revenue perspective.
Advocates are connected, seems like a given, but their research has shown that an advocate on average will know 3x more people than a traditional customer. Advocates of course advocate, but an advocate will provide a greater number of recommendations on a consistent basis. Advocates are usually passionate, 95% of advocates will volunteer their opinion.
A consumer's brand advocacy value is measured by:
1. The ability to reach potential customers (influencer)
2. Willingness to promote your offerings over a competitor's (Promoter)
3. The influence over the purchase decisions of others (Credible)
From their testing along the three items listed above they identify that 10 - 15% of brand customers are advocates.
The following is cross-posted from the WOMMA Research blog:
The second afternoon breakout session was led by Steve Hershberger, Principal, ComBlu. Steve's session looked at evangelists and how to measure their impact. Steve says he's often asked the same thing by companies looking at WOM. They say, we're interested in WOM, but it has to show up on the P&L, it has to help me reduce my ad spend and we want to be able to increase the lifetime value of every profitable customer.
All customers are not created equal. Some customers are worth more than others. There are evangelists, they are customers that help you market your products/services to other customers. It's important to be able to identify these evangelists and measure their impact on your customer base.
Steve is a loyal Dell customer, but direct mail doesn't influence him. For three months he tracked the number of direct mail items he received from Dell. In three months he received 173 pieces. At what point does he get turned off because he gets saturated with mail? Things like this need to be tracked.
The life blood of evangelists are social networks. These can be online, but many times it's offline.
Customers always have a pattern of patronage. How do they want to engage with you/the brand? As marketers we must research this. When you do this, your evangelists will rise to the top. The more you work with your evangelists, the more you'll give them experiences and stories to pass along.
Focus on outreach, what are the communal elements that you can build discussions around the product that are relevant? Be sure to build your measurement tools into your outreach efforts though.
The following is cross-posted from the WOMMA Research blog:
All the attendees streamed back into the Atrium Hall for lunch and a keynote. Ron Fournier, Co-Author of Applebee's America: How Successful Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Connect with the New American Community spoke about a variety of topics including the use of WOM in media, politics and church. Ron noted that churches are often the best users of viral marketing and WOM.
Ron says his book just scratched the surface of WOM and to this audience it's old hat. However, Washington D.C. is just learning about WOM. The type of communication that we practice just helped the Democrats win the 2006 election. The internet and the sharing of information is becoming critical in political races. In this past election a number of races were influences by blogs and other social media such as YouTube.
Ron and his co-authors began to look at how people have changed in the past few years. They knew things were changing, but how?
A lesson he has learned is that any politician is not as they seem when you first meet them. They may be better, or they may be worse, but you can't always judge somebody on a single experience.
We're living in an era of immense change:
1. The move an industrial economy to an information economy
2. Globalization
3. Terrorism
4. Vast Immigration and Migration
5. Rise of women in the workforce
People are re-centering. They are changing how they look at each other and themselves. This was happening before 9/11, but it really took off after the attack in New York. People are placing importance on their own needs in jobs rather than advancement. People are changing how they communicate and who they look to for advice. Niche media is becoming increasingly important.
From a connection standpoint we're creating new communities and organizations like never before. The internet facilitates these communities.
We can look at a few concepts:
Gut Values: Your policies matter, but people don't vote on values. They vote because the product or policy represents a higher value.
Lifestyles: Before somebody makes a purchasing decision they make lifestyle decisions first. Where are they going to live? What do they do with their free time?
Community: We turn to each other. The mega-churches don't run a 20,000 member church, they run 2000 groups of 10. They learned that it's not the turnout on Sunday that matters, it's the smaller groups meeting every night of the week.
Authenticity. People are more informed than ever. You can't say one thing and then a few days later say something else, you will be found out.
The following is cross-posted from the WOMMA Research blog:
John Goodman, Vice Chairman, TARP led the breakout session I attended on Service Process as a Word of Mouth Management System to Produce Measurable Results.
Customer service is a major touchpoint and drives much of the WOM around a brand. It's important to monitor/measure customer service.
When dealing with customers in surveys the customer will often not mention problems, why? the number one answer provided is, "it wouldn't do any good." We call that trained hopelessness.
Now, when dealing with customer surveys, we present them a list of problems. At first companies feared this type of 'problem-list' but the response from the customers is that the survey isn't a BS-Feel-good survey, they really want to know what they think. With that, they are able to discover more problems/customer-service issues than before.
Aggressive solicitation of complaints is a great way to improve the bottom line.
TARP looked at: Impact of Delightful Experience on Top-Box Loyalty by Type of Action. Here are some highlights:
Friendly 90-second staff interaction 25%: When a customer service rep would make a personal connection with the customer in the phone. Perhaps they were talking about a shared interest of hobby.
Tell me of a new product or service I can really use 30%: We used to call this cross-selling, but the caveat is that you're providing me with something that I can actually use, rather than something you're trying to sell me.
Proactively provide information on how to avoid problems or get more information out of your product 32%: This involves reaching out to your customers and helping them. In the flooring industry, Armstrong customers will sometimes use an abrasive cleaner on their new floors and ruin them. Now they consistently prompt the customer to contact them upon install, when they do talk to the customer they educate them on which cleaners they should use. The $5 phone call avoids the loss of a $12,000 customer in the future.
Issues to address in incorporate WOM into marketing. John is shocked that when dealing with many CMO's they don't ask/know these questions.
- Percentage of new customers from referrals
- Current WOM magnitude and polarity
- Percentage of those told who act on WOM
- Inexpensive experiences that lead to high positive WOM
- Cost of traditional marketing per new customer vs WOM
John jokingly said, If you get your product and services to the highest quality then you can eliminate your marketing department....but I don't think that anybody in marketing should worry about their jobs yet, there is plenty of poor customer service out there.
The following is cross-posted from the WOMMA Research blog:
It was good to see Idil Cakim, Director of Knowledge & Development, Burson-Marsteller leading the session on Mom Power. At a recent event I attended one of the sessions that focussed on marketing to women was given by an all-male group.
After doing an extensive amount of research on blogs, B&M began to look closer at female/mom bloggers. This was triggered by seeing that one of the Technorati Top 100 bloggers was a mommy-blogger. The term they've come up with is 'mom-fluentials'.
E-fluentials frequently:
- Send emails to companies
- Send emails to politicians
- Send e-mail news and media
- Make friends online
- Make business contacts online
- Provide feedback to companies
- Forward news and links to others
etc...
Mom-fliuentials are a subset of E-fluentials. Their research has shown that moms are approached for advice and often give purchasing opinions. They find that when a mom-fluential does give advice it is followed. Mom-fluentials will give an average of 13 positive recommendations per week.
How can marketers target the mom-fluentials? First, what are the key media sources that digital moms are using? The internet is obviously a large portion of their media habit. They also spend twice as much time on print media than offline moms. They are information consumers. Who do they trust? Each other, family, friends are the highest trusted sources.
How do blogs fit into the mix? About half of mom-fluentials have a blog, more than three quarters have friends that blog.
They are open to conversations with companies. They will sign up for that e-mail newsletter or some other type of online relationship. However, this might only be after building trust in the brand.
Generally, mom-fluentials shop around before making final decision and they prefer getting personal assistance while shopping.
Mom-fluentials are interested in learning about new products, however they do have long-lasting brand relationships. On average the longest relationship they have had with a brand is 17 years.
How do you measure success when marketing to mom-fluentials? Here are a few things to look for:
- Number of people interested in the WOM unit by clicking on an open e-mail, visiting a web site or downloading a clip
- Increased sales by targeting tech-savy women with families
- % of people who have heard/talked about the WOM unit
- Number of inquiries a brand's phone line or online customer service center gets about the WOM unit.
Check-list for mom-fluential communications:
- Be visible online
- Galvanize mom-fluentials with grassroots campaigns
- Link offline and online CRM efforts
- Target online and print media
- Listen to customer stories
- Measure WOM
The following is cross-posted from the WOMMA Research blog:
I am becoming somewhat of a
Peter Kim groupie. I blogged
Peter's session at Mplanet in Orlando, now I'm in DC blogging his panel at WOMMA. Peter is serving as the moderator of a panel talking about monitoring brand WOM. Joining Peter on the panel are:
Jim Nail, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Cymfony
Brian Glover, Senior Manager, Market Strategy, Biz360
Maxine Friedman, VP, Marketing, Brandimensions
Howard Kaushansky, President, Umbria
Max Kalehoff, Marketing & Communications Director, Nielsen BuzzMetrics
David Rabjohns, President, MotiveQuest
My flight from Florida arrived a bit late so I walked in just as the panel was introducing themselves. As always, this is live-blogging so excuse the typos and other little bits. They'll be cleaned up shortly.
Peter's first question: From Forrester's perspective they feel that the brand monitoring matters, so can the panelists give some recent case examples.
Max: Top three food manufacturer had to make a $100 million decision to determine what type of vegetable oil to include in all their products. As we've seen with food ingredients something can suddenly This is a major decision. What they looked to was nutrition and food experts to tap into their insight. This goes beyond traditional media monitoring and other types of media, it's really a consumer focussed. The big decision was which
David: Working with Motorola and the cell-phone industry it's not always the immediate sales, it's more about long-tern loyalty. Many times the long-term loyalty is based upon emotional connections.
Maxine: Working with a major studio they had a film that was being promoted, a comic-based movie. The trailers were out, but there was little buy-in. The fan-geeks didn't like the film and the traditional consumer didn't understand it. They re-cut the trailer based upon consumer feedback and the film performed well. Maxine pointed out that the target audience isn't always the ones talking about a brand.
Howard: In the videogame space they'll look at discussion trends and sometimes the revenue does not matched established discussion. In one case they had a title that was more of a cult title, they changed their marketing and converted the cult-title into a mass-appeal audience.
Peter Kim: How is brand analysis different then traditional pr monitoring or some of the other free tools?
Brian: There are many free tools out there, but many time the free tools can only collect and display raw data, the firms that are differentiating themselves are the ones that deliver how/what can be done with that data.
Peter Kim: Let's talk about the intersection of traditional media and social media in brand monitoring...
Max: It's not to say that mainstream media is not important, however we're moving towards and era of consumer-centric media. Rather than looking at the media, we should look at the consumer. There is this buzzword called engagement.
Jim: Agrees with Max, but all the big WOM examples comes from a jump from CGM to traditional media. The trick is finding out what need to be monitored.
David: Beyond all of the media stuff that's going on, the real driving force is stories. Stories are what cause people to pass things along.
Peter Kim: In the end we're all pulling from the same content pool, how much does technology matter, specifically looking at automated analysis versus personal interpretation.
Maxine: The technology is critical. They spend quite a bit of time making sure that their spiders and bots are working well. Yes they have the technology down, but the human element is critical. Machines can't understand the contextual or cultural influences in text. Humans understand what other humans say. They have 400 data analysts categorizing the information that the computer have already found.
Howard: This world is a mess, all these vendors all crawling blogs and it's difficult to classify things sometimes. What is a verb? Technology does give you an edge to scale routine processes, but the human element is still important. Technology is also very important for speed.
Max: You don't reach scale without technology.
Brian: Technology also helps take the point of view of the client. Some brands wants to be associated with certain words, while others do not. For example, 'Aggressive'. Orcale might want to be protrayed as aggressive, while State Farm will now.
Peter Kim: What is the key question that a potential customer needs to ask a brand monitoring company
Brian: What are the goals we're trying to accomplish? And what are the tools needed to accomplish these goals?
Howard: How do I turn the numbers into ROI.
Jim: First is technology, do you have the right balance of technology and people. Second, content, do you have access to all the content that I'll need? Third, services, do you have services to train and educate me how I can use this?
Maxine: How can you help us make decisions based upon this information? I don't just want a report that will sit on my desk. How do I know the data is valuable/reliable?
David: What flavor are you looking for? Some of us on the panel share clients since they're looking for more strategic thinking. Others are looking for more of a dashboard solution.
Max: How do you sell this internally? Sure we can get a meeting with a CMO or somebody else, but how do you sell in to the rest of the team?
Open Q&A: Is there such a thing as B2B WOM and is it being measured?
David: We work with HP in the B2B space, and yes it is out there and we're measuring it.
Jim: We see it and measure it, from manufacturing to heavy industry.
Brian: They're working with Sun to track the impact of Jonathan Schwartz's blog.
I am off this morning to Washington D.C. for the WOMMA Summit which I'll be blogging with Marianne Richmond. You'll be able to follow all the action at the main WOMMA Blog and the WOMMA Research Blog.
There is a blogger dinner on Monday night, which will include none other than Constantin Basturea and quite a few other friends.
