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Jeremiah has pioneered a lot of the social media thinking found in progressive companies today and his blog, Web Strategist, is known to senior business and agency marketing executives world-wide. I’ve been reading it for many years. This webinar addressed several key issues from a social engagement and commerce perspective and promised to share how marketers are using social media to engage customers and prospects across the entire lifecycle. Customer acquisition isn’t a just a linear path through a sales funnel any more. Social engagement and sharing opportunities exist wherever content is published, interactions and brand/consumer communications occur. Realizing how to incorporate social elements to facilitate engagement and sharing helps brands extend their reach and enlist customers to advocate for them. Sanjay opened things up stating that driving engagement is essential throughout the customer experience, not just at the top of the funnel. Crowd Factory provides software that facilitates social promotion and engagement of all marketing content. Jeremiah shared that when marketers come to the table, they often apply social media efforts in a piecemeal way. It’s important to involve the entire customer lifecycle and to think about the entire customer journey. Altimeter asked 140 social strategists: What 3 go to marketing social strategy objectives will you focus on most in 2011? Responses were led by Website Integration (46.7%), followed by Ongoing Dialog with Customers (43.4%) and Listening/Learning About Customers (37.7%)  Source: Altimeter Group The Customer Hourglass FrameworkThe challenge is that companies continue to build tactics in solios. Public Relations, Branding, Ecommerce and other groups might be building different social experiences for the same brand. These individual efforts result in an incomplete customer experience. The traditional purchase funnel is outdated. Think about how we can use that funnel to be more effective, ala “Flip the Funnel” (Joseph Jaffe). The Customer Hourglass is a model for this alternative thinking and looks at the entire customer experience: Awareness, Consideration, Intent, Purchase, Support, Loyalty, Advocacy. Jeremiah’s presentation explores each of these brand and customer experiences as it relates to social media. Awareness: Customers & prospects may not know who you are, so the goal is to become top of mind. A great example: AmEx OPEN Forum surfaces small business owner discussions and networking opportunities. This community enables small business owners to connect with each other and gain insights and expertise from thought leader contributed content. Awareness Key Take Aways:
Consideration: It’s about letting customers advocate for you. Leverage your customer’s content. Example: Epson has included customer reviews. Visitors who interacted with reviews were 67% more likely to convert. They also had a 25% higher average order value. The downside of other people’s content is you lose control. Consideration Take Aways:
Intent: Customer interactions with ecommerce content provides opportunities to share their intent with relevant networks. Example: Levi’s incorporates the “Like” button. Shoppers can “Like” and post comments about produccts straight to their Facebook wall. Customers see an instant shopping cart based on previous friend’s “Likes”. The caveat is that the data isn’t always correct, but is improving. Levi’s isn’t sharing performance numbers but they’re continuing this activity, so something is happening for them to warrant continued investment. Intent Takeaways:
Purchase - Tapping into friends at POP (point of purchase). This is where to connect with customers at the point of decision in the ecommerce experience. An example is Facebook launching group buying deals. Another is Sony using group buying incentives to promote an album launch (Britney Spears). If a visitor got 5 friends to pre-order they all get 20% off. Sony reports a 50% traffic bump at launch. Purchase Takeaways:
Support: Using these technologies to encouragte customers to have a great experience. Example: Wells Fargo – @askwellsfargo is used to listen to customers and offer assistance. In the regulated space there are important concerns around privacy, so conversations are often taken to private chat or channels. Q/A tools, forums and similar applications can be used to encourage customers to support each other. Support Takeaways:
Loyalty: The social application to this phase extends to multiple areas. Example: Hilton develped a mobile application “Top Guests”, which is basically a whitelabel version of Foursquare for the hospitality industry. HHonors members can give a Facebook friend 25% off Doubletree B&B reservation once they check in. Loyalty Takeawyas:
Advocacy: Another phase that extends to multiple areas, involves enabling customers to serve as brand ambassadors. Example: TurboTax Inner Circul uses a community management tool.
Another Advocacy example is Microsoft MVP – Most Valuable Professional. Every year 4,000 MVPs are nominated by peers, employees, and other MVPs then selected by an internal panel. Term of service is 1 year. It gets customers to do the work of evangelizing the brand. Advocacy Takeaway:
Summary: Remember that customers are behaving in new ways, in new places and have new expectations. Think beyond the silos. Sanjay asks: Where do customers spend their time?
There are a number of social applications and tactics social media marketers use to engage customers online including:
Channels used to deploy these applications and tactics include: Website, Facebook, Display Ads, Mobile, Landing, Email. These tactics and channels extend across the customer lifecycle. Marketers can create the ability during the ecommerce experience, to engage with social network friends (Facebook) for opinions. An example is the Rachel Ray website where customers can tap into their Facebook network during the purchase experience for advice.
Tips on engaging customers throughout the lifecycle:
Social data across the lifecycle is critical to success. Think about social as an “Add-in” or extension to what you are already doing at each stage – not a separate thing. (I would recommend SEO and Social Media Optimization in the same way). Use the right social engagement for the right touch point – all from a single place so you have a common set of data about your customers. Use analytics and real-time feedback to determine what works and what doesn’t.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Driving Social Media & Customer Acquisition Throughout the Customer Lifecycle | http://www.toprankblog.com  More Recent Articles | | ||
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I received an invite to CrowdFactory’s “Driving Social Media & Customer Acquisition Throughout the Customer Lifecycle” webinar yesterday with 
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