b2b success stories...associated with social media sites to the point of equating success with...
TRANSCRIPT
B2B Success Stories:
Integrating
Social Media
Into Overall
Strategy
Our Panelists
Kirsten Watson:Director, Corporate MarketingKinaxis
Deirdre Walsh:Community and Social Media Manager, National Instruments
Mike Travis:Founder and CEO, Equation Research
Christina “CK” Kerley:B2B Marketing SpecialistCKB2B
Ron Casalotti:Social Media Lead Bloomberg L.P.
Business Exchange “BX”
Industry:
Target Audiences:
Social-Media Program:
Launched:
Business Media Publishing
Business, financial and government decision-makers, C-Suite Execs.
September 2008 (public beta)
Businessweek’s efforts entailed 3 main goals:
Increase user engagement on our sites.
Participate in the conversations that areimportant to our users (and target users) outside of our domain.
Extend the useful life of our business orientedcontent beyond the typical magazine or online news-site lifecycle.
What Were The Goals?
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What Was The Strategy?
BusinessWeek combined several strategies, including:
The concept of the “wisdom of the crowds”
Long-tail marketing and the social media hook of “people like me”.
Basic human motivation for participating in social networks for the benefit of others.
The desire to be recognized as a thought leader and subject matter expert.
The need for a “professional online persona”.
What Are The Points of ROI?
A growing folksonomy of BX topics suggested by users resulting in over 1,700 topics where the users have told us what topics are important to them.
Over 40K key influencer users contributing over 1MM article links added.
7.2K Twitter followers in 18 months grown organically without the use of deceivingly inflationary user-purchase programs (@bwbx).
Over 60 current and former business-side and editorial associates on personal Twitter accounts reinforcing our brand.
How does integrating social media enhance your other marketing programs?
Provided a new source of potential customers (subscribers) to add to existing direct mail opt-in lists.
Unlike most members of those lists, those from social media had already actively sought out the company and performed advanced actions (e.g. profile creation/registration) and thus, as a group, are more receptive to receiving information from the company.
Direct mailings where the open-rate topped 30%, approximately 10x normal returns.
Helped direct our content focus in other marketing programs due to better understanding the content that our target audiences are most passionate about.
“Ignore the numbers: There is a tendency for those new to social media to fixate
on the number of people (followers, fans, etc.) that are associated with social media sites to the point of
equating success with quantity. Don't fall into that trap.
The key is in engaging your users on a meaningful level and on a 1:1 basis. Be out there, be real, be responsive,
be transparent and the numbers will follow –organically”.
Top Tip!ENGAGE
Industry:
Target Audiences:
Social-Media Program:
Launched:
Software & Hardware
2006/2007
Engineers and Scientists across myriad industries spanning Aerospace to Zoology
Developer Communities, Idea Exchanges, Code Exchanges, Blogs, Forums, etc.
What Were The Goals?
Ensure Customer Success
Obtain Valuable Product Feedback
Drive New & Repeat Business
Increase Awareness and Loyalty,Reputation Management
Foster Community Growth and Engagement
What Was The Strategy?
NI’s Strategy Focused on 4 Key Areas Of:
Content Exchange•Focus on technical content (quality and quantity)•Optimize “currency” exchange
Technical Collaboration•Create niche groups (geo, application, industry) •Build a stronger partner network •Connect R&D to the community•Bridge online and offline activities
Rewards and Reputation•Find, reward and recognize ambassadors
On- and Off-Domain Technologies with Community at the Heart • Utilize a wide-variety of technologies• Map each technology to the marketing funnel
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What Are The Points of ROI?
Customer Success• Community members answer 50% of online support
questions• LabVIEW experts have shared more than 2,700 code
files• Engineers at 250 companies have submitted 6,000
instrument drivers
Product Feedback• 12 new LabVIEW features were developed based on
user ideas since August• Industry experts provided feedback prior to LabVIEW
Robotics launch
Continued…
What Are The Points of ROI?
Awareness/Loyalty• 40% of traffic comes from long-tail search and UGC• Thousands of engineers and scientists participate in
virtual user groups• Measurable increase in actionable conversations YOY
Community Growth and Engagement• 140,000 engineers and scientists in the NI Developer
Community• 3 “Knights of NI” have each created 10,000 support
posts• 25 LabVIEW Champions help evangelize products in
10 countries
How does integrating social media enhance your other marketing programs?
Internal integration: Created a Virtual Social Media Team comprised of members from each of the marketing functions—across PR, Ad, Events, Direct Mail, Product Marketing—with each member responsible for (1) integrating social media into traditional programs and (2) working on social-media specific projects.
Social and Traditional ‘Feed’ Each Other. The Corporate Content team highlights social and user-generated content in our traditional e-newsletter AND writes Tweets that align with corporate messaging strategies.
Events: Increased awareness, attendance and engagement at annual user conference and regional seminars
PR: Improved relationships and real-time conversations with influential editors and bloggers, leading to product coverage
Corporate Content: Increased CTRs in e-newsletters that feature online community content .
“It’s easy to get distracted by all of the technologies, so
utilize something like the P.O.S.T. method
(People, Objectives, Strategy, Tech) outlined in Groundswell to
develop your plan.”
Top Tip!PLANNING
Crowdsourcing
http://www.equationresearch.com/w1/2009_marketing_trends_study.html
2009 Crowdsourced Marketing Industry Trends Study
Industry:
Target Audiences:
Social-Media Program:
Launched:
Professional Services
Marketing, market research and consumer insights professionals on corporate and agency sides.
April 2009
What Were The Goals?
Increase brand presence in the B2B space.
Position our business as a truly different kind of market research company with a unique approach.
Grow a permission-based network of sales prospects.
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What Was The Strategy?
Engage the audience through an innovative approach of crowdsourcing.
Focus on one program that was “first-of-its-kind” in its industry and among its target audiences.
Designing and developing a research study that was 100% “By marketers and for marketers.”
What Are The Points of ROI?
Exposure. Earned media exposures across popular marketing publications and blogs.
Traffic. 200% increase in Web site traffic.
Prospect Database. Five-fold increase in amount of leads generated over all other marketing programs to date, with 400 new prospects that opted-in to be contacted by Equation in the future.
How does integrating social media enhance your other marketing programs?
New prospects to contact with other campaigns. Professionals added to the database who opted-in to receive future communications are now part of a “stay in touch” campaign promoting other releases, webinar invitations, white papers, etc.
Showcased the launch of new service offering around the social-media program. Equation integrated the raw data from the crowdsourced survey into the launch of their new Web-based analytics and reporting software so as to invite clients and the new prospects to a demonstration of our new software package.
New way to engage existing clients. Equation invited the online marketing community and its current clients to participate in the survey program to expose them to a new social-media market trend methodology—as a result, the company saw a nice bump in RFP’s and business landed among their top 20 clients.
“Especially when targeting B2B, the first step in engagement
should be asking, “How can we add real value to the conversation?”
Top Tip!VALUE
Supply Chain Expert Community
Industry:
Target Audiences:
Social-Media Program:
Launched:
Supply Chain Management Solutions
Supply chain professionals across
industries including: high-tech
electronics, aerospace, defense,
industrial, pharmaceutical.
July 2009
What Were The Goals?
Double Web traffic
Double conversions (leads)
Foster a greater awareness of the company’s supply-chain management solutions
What Was The Strategy?
At a high level, marketing employed a 3-pronged strategy:
Find out where the audience ‘hangs out’
Get involved in key online locations
Drive interest from there to the Kinaxis Web properties by adding value (not selling )through the creation of a highly engaging, content-rich “home” for supply chain experts to LEARN, LAUGH, SHARE and CONNECT.
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What Are The Points of ROI?
Traffic:• 2.7X increase in traffic to Kinaxis.com • 3.2X increase in conversions (leads) • 5.3X increase in traffic to the blog/community
Community:6X increase in registered community members: Today - over 2,300 registered members (35% increase since Jan. 2010).
Revenues:Double-digit subscription growth (paid users of our SaaSproduct RapidResponse), topping 30,000 users and counting.
How does integrating social media enhance your other marketing programs?
Social media is now at the core of all the company’s marketing initiatives:
If not explicitly promoting the community as a resource that supply chain experts should join, Kinaxis is driving the majority of their other programs to the content, resources and value that can be found at the community site (or the blog).
Executes all PR initiatives in true social media style, as with the implementation of a “social” press release etc.
All the company’s marketing initiatives are based on the foundations of great SEO.
Kinaxis has developed what they refer to as the “marketing engine” – which enables them to outperform much larger competitors in rankings, etc .
Top Tip!S
E
O
“When creating and maintaining your social-media program, always
be thinking SEO.”
Questions
Learn More About Our Panelists
• A social media professional since 1997• Curated Community for 10 years at AOL• As Director of User Participation for
BusinessWeek concentrated on leveraging social media on its business topic social media platform Business Exchange
• Currently leads the social media initiative for Bloomberg L.P., one of the largest global news and information companies.
Ron CasalottiSocial Media Lead for Bloomberg L.P.
• Develops strategy and marketing plans for a Groundswell Award-winning global community of 140,000 engineers and scientists
• Supervises all corporate strategies on services like blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn
• Trains employees and industry peers worldwide on social media guidelines and best practices
• Previously, specialized in media relations, crisis communications and public affairs for companies like Allstate and Hewlett-Packard
Deirdre WalshCommunity and Social Media
Manager, National Instruments
• Launched Equation in 2000.
• Plays a role in the development of projects, the analysis of the results and everything in between—but mostly admires the heavy lifting of a very smart team.
• Launched Equation with a distributive philosophy, foregoing a central office to drive the culture of the business and its impact on people's personal lives.
• Equation was also named a SMB Top 20 award winner for its innovative use of technology to support this business model.
Mike TravisFounder and CEO, Equation Research
Kirsten WatsonDirector, Corporate Marketing, Kinaxis
• 18 years marketing for technology companies; served as director, corporate marketing for Kinaxis since 2004.•Played a pivotal role in innovative ventures in new media, helped spearhead the development of the Kinaxis blog, The 21st
Century Supply Chain, main architect behind the Kinaxis Social Media Strategy.•Under Watson’s leadership, Kinaxis has won awards including the BtoB Magazine 2010 Social Media Marketing Award for Best Integrated Campaign, and the MarketingProfs B2B Social-Media Case Study Challenge. •In 2002, Watson was named one of the “Top 5 Business People to Watch” and a “Top 40 Under Forty” by the Ottawa Business Journal.
Christina “CK” KerleyB2B Marketing Specialist, CKB2B
• 15+ years working in marketing strategy through development, retained by Fortune 500 companies including IBM, Verizon, Symbol Technologies, FCG and ISI.
• Trains and strategically advises B2B companies on strategy, social media and mobile media.
• Featured industry voice/writer on marketing with emerging technologies for media outlets including MarketingProfs (U.S.) and B2B Marketing Magazine (U.K.).
• Speaker for industry events, including Sun Microsystems, American Marketing Association, SES, SBMU, B2B Forum.