Let’s cut to the chase shall we. B2B marketers want leads. In fact 70% say it is the top priority.

In social media we have the opportunity. Our buyers are there. Global Web Index shows that over 60% of B2B buyers go online to research for work. Online, where the leading influence for decision making is “conversations with people from the company on a social network”.

But content creates those valuable conversations

We need great content to have great conversations. The trouble is that content requires investment. Either time or money.

And if resource and investment weren’t the only issues. Every B2B brand has woken up to content. We are deluged with videos, white papers, case studies and a general slush pile of information.

How can you focus on squeezing every lead you can from your content investment?

Producing content specifically for lead generation takes great concentration and determination. You also have to be a quick learner, as becoming more aware of purchase signals and buyer behaviour will remove speculation and uncertainty from your activity. Obtaining value from social content requires planning and forward thinking. And make sure you always focus on these 3 essential fundamentals:

1.     Planning to ensure your content resonates and delivers results 

Right up front, your planning requires deliberation. A social audience is not like any other, we must reach buyers by understanding what interests them and encourages them to purchase. Consider different behaviours and motivations for a wide range of social users. Not only will this give you the opportunity to meet buyers at the right time and place, but you will also be ready with the right message!

Analyse conversations, get into the nitty gritty and create a taxonomy of topics and sales triggers. Consider different customer paths, isolate motivations from the chatter, and plan integration.

2.     Social content is part of the exchange  

In an earlier post, Kate showed that 80% of marketers think that custom content needs to be central to marketing activity. In social, content should always have a purpose. And when it comes to lead generation, you need to be very clear about what you want from the reader. How you will initiate an exchange of information, capture contact details and progress the marketing qualified lead to a sales lead.

Consider CTAs, capture forms, copy on landing pages, CRM integration, advertising and focussing a campaign to drive messages.

3.     Social media optimisation is the key to smart lead generation

With 9 years of experience in social media I feel confident in letting the cat out of the bag…no one knows what content will work for each B2B business, at first! Experimenting, benchmarking and evaluating are mandatory. So be smart about it; record and analyse as you go. Then go one step further and

• Isolate combinations of copy and visual content that perform best
• Use multivariate testing to isolate what works best
• Measure metrics across the sales funnel and start to plot your attribution model

Sure, it’s a structured approach. And, yes, it requires using your head. But the results speak volumes. This approach will focus your content on lead generation and save you investing in content that bleeds resources and money. Plus, it has a way of keeping everybody in the business happy!

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It was revealed last week that Google+ has overtaken Twitter in the US as the second biggest social network. Whilst the prominence of Google+ is growing it is becoming more apparent that companies can no longer afford to neglect the platform from their social media marketing strategy. Brands should look past simply using Google+ for the SEO benefits and look at ways to engage with their communities.

They can do this by Google Hangouts, the group video chat feature on Google+. The feature is available to any brand page and allows up to nine people to ‘hangout’ and is a fantastic way of bringing conversations to life. Have a look at these 9 brands that are utilising Google Hangouts for engagement and exposure.

New York Times
The New York Times is a prominent force on Google Hangouts, frequently using the feature to engage with their audience, with topics ranging from foreign affairs to sport, to voter concerns to making pasta with Nigella Lawson. What makes their use of Hangouts unique is their use of the feature to broadcast breaking news stories, reaching and engaging with online audiences in a way that other platforms can’t.

Cadbury’s
The confectionary company were one of the first brands to realise the potential of Google+ as a platform, and their activities on Google Hangouts is continuously setting the bar for other brands, especially when it comes to launching a new product. For their launch of their Dairy Milk Bubbly Mint bar they invited 9 members of the Cadbury community to simultaneously taste the bar together for the first time on air.

Channel 4
Channel 4’s programme Bedtime Live used Google Hangouts to re-invent the ‘call in’ format, by encouraging views to connect with the show and ask questions via Google Hangout. The use of Google Hangouts is one of the latest moves of the broadcaster to make TV a more social experience.

NASA
NASA took Google Hangouts to meteoric new heights by hosting a Hangout from space, creating an out of this world experience with its audience. The three astronauts answered questions from the online community who have been interested to watch and ask questions to astronauts both on orbit and on the ground about everything from how to brush your teeth in space, to whether they believe in alien life.

Barack Obama

One of the best aspects of Google Hangouts is that it allows you to connect with your community and solidify your status. President Obama did this during his campaign trail last year when he hosted a Google Hangout to connect with supporters and take questions from voters. What Hangouts offer that other platforms don’t is a more personal sense of connection, which the President is able to utilise. For example, in one of his Hangouts he was able to actively win over a supporter of the opposing side live on air!

Dell
Google Hangouts is a perfect channel for customer services, as the audience can actively troubleshoot problems and brands can provide great customer service. Dell has already hosted a multitude of Hangouts, most of which were focused on customer service, with an official Dell to provide top-notch customer service.

ASOS
ASOS experimented with Google Hangouts for their winter campaign. The online fashion retailer hosted hour long ‘Shop-Along’ events. Each event was hosted by a different personality including model Charlotte Free, Rapper Azealia Banks and the US Editor Indigo Clark. The Hangouts consisted of the host answering questions live online, chatting about the latest looks and trends in fashion as well as interactively running through items on the ASOS website with their viewers.

Topshop
Topshop tapped into the vast online fashion community to stand out during London fashion week and give fans a model’s-eye-view of the event as part of their wider Google+ campaign. The Hangout connected fashion bloggers and fans with back stage access to the runway show and allowed them to engage with style icons such as Kate Bosworth, Pixie Geldof, models Rosie Tapner and Jourdan Dunn.

Glamour Magazine
The magazine used Google Hangouts not only to branch out from print and engage with fans in a new medium around their content but as a means of advertising. Whilst the Hangouts featured special guests and personalities, each of their Hangout campaigns was sponsored by a different company whose products were promoted subtly throughout broadcast.

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With the popularity of LinkedIn Groups growing alongside the other conversation platforms, such as LinkedIn Today and company pages, it has become a considerable challenge to identify the most relevant groups to join.

Let’s say you are an IT professional looking to network with your peers… How do you go about choosing the right group? For the IT industry alone, there are over 5,000 groups to choose from!

There are advanced, systematic ways to identify the optimum LinkedIn Group that suits your aims and content marketing strategy. This requires extensive, in-depth quantitative analysis of content, demographics and activity of the groups within the industry.

That said, if you don’t have the time or resources, it is worth simply having a browse through the most popular discussions as well as familiarising yourself with the basic statistics of the group in question. I’ve had a look and chosen the following 3 groups, and each stands out for their very own reason…

• 524,029 members
• Comments per discussion: 0.16 
• Majority function: Marketing (18%)

Reason for attention: Half a million members!

E-Marketing Association, founded in 2007, has acquired over half a million members within the space of 6 years! This is a truly impressive achievement, and the ripple effect of membership growth is worth having a look at…

The graph above shows the number of new members per week – the more members joined the group, the higher the reach and awareness of other potential members to join the group grew in turn. Over the first year there were around 20-100 new members per week, until July 2008, when the ripple effect came into full force, generating over a thousand new members per week! Long-term persistence paid off. Truly impressive.

• 93,013 members
• Comments per discussion: 0.34
• Majority function: Marketing (13%)

Reason for attention: 280 discussions a week!

E-Commerce Network is a similar LinkedIn mega-group… It stands out with an impressive 280 discussions per week. Even though only every third discussion generates a comment, it still indicates that the volume of information being shared on LinkedIn is enormous!

The most popular recent discussion provoked 50 comments. It has a slightly controversial title, thought-provoking content, and a simple yes/no question… All the ingredients necessary for an explosive discussion!

• 25,762 members
• Comments per discussion: 4.1
• Majority function: Finance (15%)

Reason for attention: high quality discussions

It must be really challenging to administer a mega group like the two I looked at above. Spam and irrelevant posts invariably creep in unless a stringent monitoring process is set in place. Microsoft Excel Users group have maintained an impressively high quality of discussions whilst enabling the membership to grow to over 25,000. It is a difficult balance to keep. Either the group is small but of high quality, or vice-versa. However, Microsoft Excel Users have achieved both.

Ultimately, each individual LinkedIn Group has its own mini-world and culture. Choosing the right group to join is a difficult, but not impossible, task. As long as you analyse both quality and quantity of discussions as well as the demographics, your content marketing efforts should soon bear fruit!

You can also learn How to provoke good LinkedIn discussions from us.

Images courtesy of LinkedIn

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Although creating a tweet or a Facebook status update is quick and easy, brands need to realise that social can offer a lot more in the long-term. The effort that you put into managing your social presence is meant for a lot more than one sale; you are building an on-going and personal relationship with specific audiences.

We know that consumers will weigh up their options before making a purchase. Our research shows that Live Brand Social can influence purchase consideration. A well-received event can spur participants on to make recommendations; 54% will recommend the brand to a friend and 33% will write a positive review, but there is more to it than that.

Because of Live Brand Social, 54% of respondents will find out more about a product or service online and 46% will visit the brand in-store.

We have already learnt that 53% of consumers will purchase a product as a result of live experiences with social from the first post in this series. But in addition to this, 28% will purchase within a month and 38% expect to become regular customers as a result.

In short, consumer willingness to buy (as shown by purchase consideration) can be a rewarding behaviour for brands to capitalise on online. Together, social and brand experiences can have an influence throughout the purchase path, filling the sales funnel to deliver tangible results for the long-term as well as immediate sales. Smart brands will look again at their experiential marketing to see how and where they can trigger activity in all areas of the funnel driving short term purchases and long term relationships that benefit the brand long after the event marketing has finished.

Download the full report and share your thoughts on live brand social with us bit.ly/LiveBrandSocial #LiveBrandSocial 

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Word of mouth is a coveted form of marketing. There is nothing like your customers talking positively about your brand, product and services. Google suggests that the value is on the Zero Moment of Truth where consumers jump online to check out a brand before purchase. The way customers buy has changed. The purchase path is no longer a funnel from awareness to sales; it is now a loop. Feedback from the brands and product experience informs repeat and new purchases.

A well-conceived live brand social campaign can encourage great reviews and recommendations. Our research shows that, while 37% will join the brand’s social networking page or profile after a live experience, 54% will recommend the brand to a friend. As well as that, 33% will write a positive review based on their experience of live events with social.

Because review and comparison sites are so popular, not to mention easy to find in the search engines, it is not surprising that consumers will consult reviews from previous customers before making a purchase. So having impromptu, positive reviews and genuine recommendations from your target audience can add untold value to a brand.

Lending more weight to our research, the Harvard Business Review states that 76% of consumers cite word of mouth as their main influence when making purchase decisions compared to traditional advertising – and that word of mouth has been found to be 10 times more effective than TV or print.

53% of consumers become aware of a live experience from a friend’s social media activity and over half (53%) are motivated to share on social because they want to connect with friends online. To take it one step further, you can use this information to actively encourage social word of mouth.

Monitor the conversations around your experience. Look for the advocates and identify influencers and fans and then actively engage with your advocates directly, give them more reasons to talk about you and your products, and even invite them to your next live experience! By doing so you are creating and encouraging brand evangelists who will ultimately do your advertising for you by word of mouth.

Download the full report and share your thoughts on live brand social with us bit.ly/LiveBrandSocial #LiveBrandSocial 

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Although Vine is still a relatively new app, it has shown that it has clout with brands and advertisers in a short period of time. Vine is a mobile app that lets you shoot six-second videos, or Vines, to share on social networking sites. With brands continuing to utilise the app, take a look at Annie’s five tips for making an amazing Vine:

1) Have a clear message

The unique aspect of Vine is the fact that you only have six seconds to make your point. Having a clear message and structure to your video is essential to making a good recording. For example Nintendo uses Vine as a teaser to preview future products to fans.

2) Tell a story

Even though you only have a short amount of time, it is possible to tell a story over Vine. For their Valentine’s day campaign Tropicana cleverly utilised Vine by showing a brief love story between oranges, finishing with a Happy Valentine’s Day message.

3) Be creative and entertaining

The whole point of Vine is to be as visual and creative as you possibly can within six seconds. Brands need to remember that if you want your Vine to have viral potential then it has to be unique and entertaining!

Look at these winning Vines from the #6SecFilms competition earlier this year for inspiration!

4) Engage Your Followers in Conversation

At its core Vine is a social media platform; this means brands should take the opportunity to get engagement from their audience. A great way to integrate Vine with social is to ask your audience a question via Twitter and then show them the answer through Vine.  For example, book retailer Simon & Schuster used Vine to engage with their fans by asking them what they were reading over the weekend.

5) Utilise the loop feature

Although this may not be a popular aspect of Vine the fact is that all videos automatically loop. The infinite loop forces you to be more creative with your video’s ending as you have to try to find a way of smoothly transitioning the ending and beginning of your video. Brands can utilise the loop feature if their brand name is mentioned in the video, garnering continued exposure.

Images courtesy of Vine

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Already we’ve explored the recent research on Live Brand Social to look at how people’s behaviours can inform your planning. You’ve seen the best ways you can use a combination of live events and social media; how you can target your audience and interact with them on social networks before, during and after an experience to add value to your brand.

In this fourth post we’ll find out how consumers are sharing live brand social content with each other. While 49% feel more positive about a brand as a result of live brand social, 37% will join the brand’s social networking page or profile after a live experience. This now gives you a chance to further engage with your customers.

With an increase in fans, followers and wider conversations about your company, how are audiences communicating in social? And how can you engage with them? 

Over two thirds (69%) of survey participants use mobile devices to share content from live experiences. Smartphones and tablets make it very easy for users to share content on social platforms.

Brands can of course be more active on social by suggesting ready-made tweets or hashtags for participants to share, while any photo opportunities are very effective. But smart companies will go one step further and consider how experiential events can be designed for mobile and social sharing:

• Resize your content: create hassle free content with eye-catching features that encourage consumers to take and share photos at your live experiences

• Invite friends: 61% like to post or share on social media if it includes friends. Make sure that there are opportunities or attractions worth sharing at your event

• Short and sweet: by writing brand messages and calls to action that are to the point consumers can share your words easily. Aim to be within Twitter’s 140 characters

Inspiring and motivating social sharing is not just about the device used to connect. Nor is it just about the format, be it photo, video or plain copy. It is much more about the behaviours of your audience. The research shows that only 23% of consumers claimed they wanted to be the first to tell friends. So bragging rights really don’t seem to matter that much. What matters is that the experience and social content around it is unusual (71%), entertaining (69%) and relevant (65%).

Download the full report and share your thoughts on live brand social with us bit.ly/LiveBrandSocial #LiveBrandSocial 

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Google has developed yet another mind-blowing research tool. Despite the rather unimaginative name, “The Customer Journey to Online Purchase”, it nevertheless provides extremely valuable data to boost the imagination of online marketers, providing even further evidence to treat social media as an integral part of any serious marketing strategy.

So what does it show? In Google’s own words:

Before making an online purchase decision, a customer may engage with your brand through many different media channels over several days. This tool helps you explore and understand the customer journey to improve your marketing programs.

The tool distinguishes between assisted and last interactions, showing which channels contributed towards the sale at the beginning of the customer journey, and which concluded the sale. Its impressive sample size (358.9m conversions across 35.9k profiles) ensures that the findings are highly reliable. The data is sorted by location and industry, highlighting the importance of local context in which the marketing activity takes place, as well as the peculiarities of various industries.

To see the significance of the tool, let’s compare the customer journey in the health sector in two different countries – Brazil and the US respectively:

The difference is considerable. In Brazil, healthcare customers tend to start their journey to purchase via display advertisements, they continue their journey via e-mail and only then are they exposed to social channels. In contrast, the customer journey in the US starts with social media.

Implications of attribution modelling on marketing strategy

The significance of Google’s research should not be underestimated. In particular, it greatly helps the following aspects of the marketing strategy:

1. Expectation management. Any online marketing attempts should be governed by realistic expectations. So far, however, it has been challenging to set the highly accurate KPIs in advance because there has been no clear data on the exact customer path to purchase. Backed by rigid sampling, attribution modelling revolutionises expectation management and thus enables more accurate planning.

2. Bespoke approach. Online marketing for a B2B financial services firm in Brazil will be radically different from the approach taken by a B2C retail company in France. Case studies of success may not necessarily be transferable across industries and countries. Each online marketing strategy should involve bespoke reasoning, based on the requirements and audience of the organisation in question.

3. The need to integrate. E-mail, PPC, social media and SEO efforts can no longer be treated as separate, independent entities. What matters most, is not the channel but the efficiency of integrating and optimising all these channels into one, overall customer path to purchase.  

Further steps

Despite the significance of this tool, there is still some room for improvement:

• Industry-specificity. It would be great to drill down the industry list even further. Would the Edu/Gov sector include the charitable organisations? Is it entirely accurate to generalise Finance as one industry?
• Platform-specificity. Social media is more than just one channel. It comprises a highly diverse selection of individual platforms that differ significantly in terms of audience demographics and significance in the customer journey. It would be great to see how Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and other social channels differ amongst themselves.

You can find the tool here. Let us know how valuable you find the data?

Images courtesy of Google

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In the last Live Brand Social post we touched on how, together, live experiences and social create a 48% more successful event. Being active on social before, during and after a live event gives you the greatest opportunity to extend the relationship: 

In our report, 61% of participants find out about a live experience from a friend but over half (56%) find out through social media. In fact, 43% find out through Facebook, 22% see a tweet and 19% see it in their Newsfeed. It is clear that Facebook is the most influential in motivating attendance at live experiences. Even more significant is that live experiences give you the chance to meet your fans face to face. 1 in 5 still find out about an event before it takes place, through the brand’s own social media pages. A fantastic opportunity to build stronger relationships with fans and turn enthusiasts into advocates.

Social media extends opportunities to develop a lasting relationship with customers after the event too. 49% of all respondents said they felt more positive about brands when they took part in live experiences with social. And 37% follow or like a brand profile on social media.

And your audiences are not just interested in joining you or feeling good about your brand: one in six will tell more than fifteen people on social media about their live experience. That is a lot of conversation about your experiential marketing!

By understanding how experiential marketing fits in with the ongoing social relationships between brands and customers, companies can capitalise on mixing the two activities. And, dare we say it, ensure that the investment is greater than the sum of its parts!

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When it comes to social media, one key to success is to focus on the activities that give you the widest reach, as efficiently as possible. You need to know that your message is being heard and more importantly that it is being heard by the right people. It is about targeting your efforts in the real world to give you the best advantage in social media.

Our recent research looked specifically at where best to look in the real world to drive social conversations. 56% of consumers will share content from live experiences on social media compared to print (49%) and TV (44%). When it comes to social media, it might be time to look a bit closer at the wider impact of experiential marketing.

Also notable from our research is the extent by which news and content about ‘live experiences’ travels across the social spaces. In fact it will often reach the people not actively participating in the event. Survey data shows that just seeing content from an experience online spreads your brand message even further; 45% have seen a live experience (but not participated) and 29% have seen live experience content on social networks without attending. But what content are they seeing? It could be footage uploaded by the brand or it could be user-generated content like photos, videos and blog posts. 

Most user-generated content is being shared through mobile. Coupled with the immediacy that smartphones and tablets bring, social media is a great way to find out what motivates your audience into not only sharing, but generating rich, original content around your brand. Breaking your content down into smaller, more manageable messages also means that information is easier for consumers to share. Give your live brand social marketing efforts proper direction and enjoy a 48% more successful event.

Download the full report and share your thoughts on live brand social with us bit.ly/LiveBrandSocial #LiveBrandSocial 

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