Aug 19
The amount spent, annually, by U.S. companies on field sales efforts is 3X their spending on all consumer advertising, more than 20X the spend on all online media, and more than 100X what they currently spend on social media. Selling is, by far, the most expensive part of strategy implementation for most firms.
The big story is that the internet is realigning, not eliminating, sales tasks, and that deserves more attention in business media.
Millennials have become the most significant consumer segment currently in times to come. These decision makers grew up in digital age, internet is like air and they are always connected to friends, so much so that these interactions have become a pivotal part of their decision making. These are digital natives.
L’Oreal, Walgreen’s Look to Measure Mobile Coupons
Great execution of digital marketing ROI measurement by Sparkfly with Pretty In My Pocket app.
3 Strategies to Measure Your Social Media
As with any marketing tool, measuring the return of social media activities is crucial as a proxy for the digital media strategy.
This article identifies 3 simple ways to measure social media results:
What Would Ashton Do—and Does It Matter?
Driven by the need of early adoption and the role of social media in promoting new products and services, marketers are spending huge amounts of money with “influencers”. They hope that their “influence score”, measured by companies such as from Klout and Peerindex, will bring results with peer-to-peer and word-of-mouth campaigns.
Based on research, Sinan Aral demonstrates that the early adoption typically attributed to influencers is in fact the results of several effects, and that the power of influence is typically overestimated 7 times.
One explanation is a sociological phenomenon called “homophily”, meaning that one’s preferences, interests, and behaviors are highly correlated with his friends’. All these things mimic social influence but may have nothing to do with it.
The research also provided another interesting insight: people don’t like spamming their friends unless they can pass a benefit along. These results conform to the sociological notion of a “gift economy,” in which generosity confers status.
Six social-media skills every leader needs
Although social-media literacy has not yet found its way into the curricula of business schools and leadership-development programs, the inherent quality of social media is a powerful transformational force that modern leaders could leverage.
In this McKinsey article, the six-dimensional set of skills and organizational capabilities leaders must build to create an enterprise level of media literacy are illustrated.
1. The leader as producer: Creating compelling content
2. The leader as distributor: Leveraging dissemination dynamics
3. The leader as recipient: Managing communication overflow
4. The leader as adviser and orchestrator: Driving strategic social-media utilization
5. The leader as architect: Creating an enabling organizational infrastructure
6. The leader as analyst: Staying ahead of the curve
These capabilities will soon be a critical source of competitive advantage.
What We Talk About When We Talk About “Social”
Nilofer Merchant presents a simple tutorial on terms related with Social Media.
Social Media as Modern Sorcery
As the world becomes more “internet socialized” advice from online peers is an important driver of the Consumer Decision Journey that firms cannot ignore.
Turn Customer Care into “Social Care” to Break Away from the Competition
According to a survey of social media users by the joint Nielsen-McKinsey, when you’re responding to customers, it’s better to be fast than effective.
How to Find New Competitive Knowledge in Social Media
Once a marketeer’s feeling, Buzz Volume is one of the metrics available in new social intelligence tools.
Pedro Antao Alves 