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Dedication This is dedicated to the people featured in these case studies who proved Social Media Marketing ROI. You taught me, to achieve results beyond your expectations, technological know-how and money runs a very distant second to a belief in yourself, your brand and courage.

Acknowledgements

Something happened in compiling these case studies I never expected. The people I wrote about wrote back. Maybe  that’s  what  differentiates  Social  Media  Marketing? Through a Google Alert, they saw someone had written about them so they reached out to help. In the process, this eBook turned into a global collaboration. People told their story from places ranging from Korea, the Netherlands, England, Chicago, and Atlanta to Milwaukee proving the principles of social media marketing work everywhere. More important, friendships were developed and I learned, around the world, how tied the values of relationships are to social media marketing success. Special thanks and much appreciation to:

David Berkowitz Toby Bloomberg Tom Dickson Eric Greenburg Augustine Fou CK Kerley Mari Luangrath Mike Moran Stan Phelps Joe Sorge

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Table of Contents

Chapter  1:  Social  Media………………………………………….4-24 33 Case Studies Prove Social Media ROI Another 33 Case Studies Prove Social Media ROI 6 Social Media ROI case studies with something in common, courage 12 case studies prove social and traditional media work better together What is the ROI of Walmart's Facebook page? A lot by many measures

Chapter  2:  Social  CRM…………………………………………..25-29 16 case studies that prove Social CRM

Chapter 3: SEO……………………………………………………..30-33 10 case studies prove ROI of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Chapter  4:  Social  Commerce…………………………………34-44 12 case studies that prove Social Commerce ROI

Chapter  5:  Customer  Service…………………………………45-51 12 digital and social media case studies that prove Customer Service ROI How 12 companies built trust using Twitter for customer service

Chapter  6:  Social  Promotion…………………………………52-65 10 case studies prove ROI of social media promotion 9 case studies where social media took out the middleman

Bio:  Rob  Petersen………………………………………………………66

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33 case studies prove Social Media ROI “How  do  I  measure  social  media  ROI?”  is  the  #1 social media question people ask according to Social Media Examiner. Recently, at lunch with David Berkowitz, Senior Director of Emerging Media and Innovation, at 360i and blogger behind 100 Ways to Measure Social Media, this question came up and we thought:  Let’s compile case studies that prove social media ROI. Here are 34 social media case studies that prove ROI. These 34 case studies cover B2C, B2B, profit and non-profit areas. They include businesses big and small. They prove social media ROI based on:

Sales Shorter Sales Cycles New Leads Improved Company Operations and Innovations that resulted in a better way to do

business Conclusion: Significant results are proven to occur in social media where low out-of-pocket investments  lead  to  high  ROI’s when businesses: 1) Have a clear business strategy, 2) Aren’t  afraid to jump in 3) Use their imagination to make the most out of social channels, customer engagement and brand relationship. Each case study has a summary headline with key results and links to reference sites for more complete details. So, next time someone at your company questions whether social media demonstrates ROI, you can give them these 34 case studies; you can also let them know there are more on the way. 33 CASE STUDIES PROVE SOCIAL MEDIA ROI

1. AFTER STEAZ: Organic Tea doubled sales through coupons downloaded and shared on Facebook and Twitter with discussion of the how and why organic teas mattered. 250,000 coupons were downloaded and 2,830 tweets were recorded an hour.

2. AJ BOMBERS:  Owner  Joe  Sorge  used  Twitter  as  social  maître’d  to  build  relationships  with 75% of his customers at his Milwaukee burger joint and weekly sales were up +60% a year later without spending $1 in traditional media. AJ BOMBERS also declared a

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“Foursquare  Day”to earn a Swarn Badge and increased sales +110%. 3. BEST BUY (Twelp Force):Best Buy employee communities grew to 2,200 employees

within 3 months and responded to over 13,000 customers on social networks answering public questions, concerns, and opinions. The Twitter feed @twelpforcenow counts over 29,000 followers and the number of questions averages 100-125 per day and is considered a key value-add by customers and the company. BLENDTEC: CEO Tom Dickson ran viral commercials on YouTube to sell blenders direct-to-consumers and increased company sales +700%.

4. BURBERRY: Social microsites secured 1,000,000 fans and a 10% increase in same-store sales.

5. CADBURY (Wispa Chocolate Bar):22,000 fans of Cadbury Wispa petitioned the company on Facebook to bring back the discontinued chocolate bar. 40 million bars were released and sold out in 18 weeks, a rate of 4 per second.

6. CISCO: Launched a new router and achieved goals using only social media. It saved the company $100,000ʹ′s.

7. CLOROX: Launched online community, CloroxClassrooms.com, with blog and Twitter effort on Labor Day weekend at the beginning of the school year. Twitter page was among the Top 10 trending topics over Labor Day weekend and blog was recognized by the Marketing to Mom Coalition and mommy bloggers for excellence in terms of delivering sharable information.

8. COFFEE GROUNDZ: Used Twitter as a direct ordering channel between the company and its customers. Coffee Groundz reported 20%-30% increase in company sales and market share via Twitter.

9. COMCAST:  Started“Comcast  Cares”  Twitter  customer  service  center and attracted 2,700 followers. Many who were critics of the company changed to raving fan. Quality of attention and dialogue serves as model for the the company.

10. CONAGRA  FOODS  (Hunt’s  Ketchup):Advocates  of  Hunt’s  pleaded  with  ConAgra  through Facebook  to  stop  putting  high  fructose  corn  syrup  in  what  they  believe  is  the  “best  ketchup  ever.” The company acts responsibly and stops. Ok. This might not track to direct  sales  but  it’s  a  great  use  of  social  media  for  a  greater  good.

11. DELL: Used Twitter to create “Dell  Outlet”  and  booked  $3  million  in  revenue  in  one  year  from Twitter postings.

12. DOMINO’S: Credited Foursquare with a 29% pre-tax profit through promotions that encourage people to check in to their stores.

13. DR. VAKSMAN (DENTIST):Dentist with five month old dental practice in San Francisco attracted 320 new clients through social media presence including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

14. DUNKINS DONUTS: Ran annual promotion, “Create  Dunkin’  Next  Donut,”  through  social  networks  to  award  grand  winner  with  $12,000  plus  year’s  supply  of  donuts. It generated  more  than  130,000  submission  for  174,000  votes  and  “a  healthy  response  in  

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sales during  the  promotion  period,”  according  to  manager  of  interactive  and  relationship marketing, David Tyler.

15. HARLEY DAVIDSON: (HDTalking.com):Harley owners created website and social community totally funded by users and user-generated content. Here, Harley owners trades photos, jokes, where to find hard to find parts, advice on Harley models and ownership plus there are at least 7 mechanics on-call at all times. HDtalking.com now has 35,000+ and cost to Harley is negligible.

16. HISPANITO: Major hispanic online community, www.hispanito.com, created entirely through social network. Within a year, it had 56,000 registered users plus 150,000 unique visitors with 6,000,000 pages viewed every month.

17. IKEA: Used one of the most popular and basic functions on Facebook, tagging pictures, and  used  it  to  IKEA’s  advantage to promote its showroom products from sales people to regular people creating recommendation and advocates all over the world and a +15% lift in sales.

18. IBM: Decided to let company employees set up their own blog and Twitter accounts to service customers and reported the following stats: There was no IBM corporate blog or Twitter account but there were 17,000 internal blogs, 100,000 employees using internal blogs and as many as 500,000 participants in company crowd-sourcing “jams.” Results showed: Crowd-sourcing identified 10 best incubator businesses, which IBM funded for $100 million and generated $100 billion in total revenue for a 10-to-1 ROI with a 44.1% gross profit margin

19. INDIUM: A company that manufactures  special  alloys  isn’t  sexy; neither is convincing 14 of its engineers to start blogs. But that exactly what the company does. It increased leads, prospects, conversions and sales by double digits plus it gave customers the opportunity  to  know  the  company’s  employees  personally.  

20. JETBLUE: Started a Twitter account to have more direct relationship with customers and potential customera and to listen and respond how they could serve them better and deal directly with any complaints. They now have over 1.5 million followers.

21. KOGI: A Food Truck serving Korean BBQ in LA used Twitter to let them customers know where the truck was and when it would be in their neighborhood. They had over 65,000 followers and 300 to 800 customers every time the truck parked.

22. LIVESTRONG: Raised $10.8 million with the Livestrong Challenge which occurred through social media channels with a blog serving as the hub. This occurred in 2009, in the midst of a deep recession that was particularly hard on non-profits.

23. LOUIS E. PAGE INC: Fencing supplier really took off when now-owner Duncan Page added a blog to the business website. Duncan himself was surprised to find an article about how to use woven wire fencing to build a horse paddock attracted more than 1,500 views alone. The result: traffic, media coverage, and an 850% increase in sales leads.

24. MOONFRUIT: Website builder offered free Apple product via Twitter and got 44,113

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followers that resulted in a 600% increase for sign-up. As another result of the promotion,  “Moonfruit”  and  “Moonfruit  Twitter”  rose  to  top-ranking search term on Google for website builders.

25. NECU JADRANU KOSOR ZA PREMIJERKU!300 member Croatian Facebook group used Facebook and Twitter to break news of sudden, unexpected resignation of prime minister of Croatia a few minutes before mainstream media. They became the largest Facebook group in Croatia within 24 hours and now have over 100,000+ fans.

26. ORACLE: Layered social networks on top of current communication channels and trained 25,000 partners, while reducing costs, boosting satisfaction and increasing PR.

27. PIZZA HUT: iPhone app for ordering accounted for 50% of orders and generate $1,000,000 in revenues.

28. PROCTER&GAMBLE: Launched social community for Tampax and Always with website, Beinggirl.com. The site focused on the shared interest of early teen girls. Social community outperformed traditional channels with ROI of 4-to-1. Beinggirl.com was expanded to 21 countries.

29. SICKKIDS: The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, set up a wiki, Casafin Ontario Wiki, for Doctors to access resources and share “best  practices.” Over 400 physicians participated in the Wiki and comparisons were made between those who did and did not. Cafasin Ontario Wiki users reported higher levels of practice change, greater CAFAS knowledge, and greater satisfaction with CAFAS implementation supports. Not only did they feel their learning curve had been accelerated thanks to the wiki, they felt more comfortable with transition.

30. SNAPPLE: Created Twitter account to share simple facts about its beverages and gained 10,000 followers.

31. STARBUCKS (MyStarbucksIdea.com): Went to customers for new product ideas. “We  used to launch a new product and it cost millions of dollars. Now, when we launch a new  product,  we  already  have  millions  of  fans,”  say  Chris  Bruzzo, Vice President Brand, Content and Online at Starbucks.

32. TURBOTAX: TeamTurboTax launched Twitter campaign to respond and answer questions during key tax season and found customers were 71% more likely to recommend TurboTax because of their interactions with the company through Twitter.

33. VIRGIN AMERICA:  Used“ promoted  tweets”  to  offer additional values to travelers and revenues to Virgin American and saw 6%-15% of travelers logged on through WiFi connections for 300 to 500 inflight tweets per day.

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Another 33 case studies prove Social Media ROI

Last week, we published, 33 Case Studies that Prove Social Media ROI. This week, we’ve  added  another 33 to bring us to 66 case studies that prove social media ROI. The purpose: Prove (with 67 examples) the value of social media and understand the ROI principles at work to help any brand thinking about using social media to build their business. The business principles: Clear business strategy + Defined measurements goals + Willingness to jump in + Imagination + Commitment = $$$ ROI We asked for input along the way. Reineke Reitsma, a Forrester Analyst in Amsterdam, asked for some social media programs that failed. We have two; one from KFC and one from Starbucks. While both  “failed”  because  the  companies  were  not  prepared for overwhelming consumer response, they show the ability of social media to drive demand. When customers came en masse, the two companies reacted in entirely different ways. I’ll  let  you  judge  who  showed good social media manners and bad. They’re  below as well and were referred by Tom Chernaik, a friend in NYC and Co-Founder of Cmp.ly, who I thank. So the next time someone at your company questions whether social media has proven ROI, refer them to these. You might also ask: Are there 67 case studies that prove ROI for what our company does? ANOTHER 33 CASE STUDIES THAT PROVE SOCIAL MEDIA ROI

1. ADIDAS: Used social networks to do guerrilla marketing on mobile (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, SMS) in and around NBA All-Star Game and increased retail sales 20X goal in Las Vegas (where All-Star Game occurred).

2. AMERICAN RED CROSS: During Hurricane Katrina, multiple organizations had trouble coordinating and sharing information connecting children to their parents. Because 44% of web users found social network as an alternative, social media reconnected more families than organized support and regular media combined. “One  person  can  take a photo.  One  person  can  post  a  message…..and  it  changes  our  understanding  of  a  situation  immediately,”  said  Macon  Phillips,  special  assistant  to  the  President.  

3. BARACK OBAMA: Social media campaign for the President on My.BarackObama.com raised $30,000,000 from over 70,000 personal fund-raising pages, 400,000 blogs, 35,000 groups and 200,000 offline events. I sometime wonder, when social media was so

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successful  getting  the  President  elected,  why  it’s  not  being  used  more  strategically,  now.   4. BARE ESSENTIALS: Makeup manufacturer used combination of e-mail and social media

to achieve unique visitor engagement rate of 75% and equivalent conversation rate to mass media channel at a small fraction of the cost.

5. BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH: The updating of personal status on social network pages for women with breast cancer received more media attention on CNN and newspaper networks than the paid efforts of numerous PR firms. The difference, of course, was the former was a marginal investment and later was paid support.

6. COCA-COLA: Achieved strongest global marketing integration ever with Expedition 206, a social media promotion where a small group of travel ambassadors went to 206 countries  over  365  days  to  “generate  happiness”  and published on social networks. It enabled global promotion execution among 3,500 Coca-Cola marketers around the world.

7. COLGATE: Launched Wisp, disposable toothpaste, through “Be  More  Kissable”  social  media video campaign (+30 more involvement) that ran on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. It achieved reach of 10,000,000+ rivaling mass advertising at small fraction of the cost.

8. DIGITAL: Magazine/blog/website with pay-per-click business model linked social media outreach to SEO for site authority. Goal was to deliver 10,000+ viewers to show profitability; social media delivered 100,000+ viewers for sustainable success.

9. FORD FIESTA: Used social media for U.S. launch to generate mass reach, build relationships with key targets and achieve reservations-to-conversion sales rates that were 10X higher than expected. On YouTube, Ford Fiesta generated 6,200,000 views with 132,000 consumers raising their hand for more information. On Flicker, there were 750,000views; 83% were new to Ford. On Twitter, there were 40,000,000 impression; 30% were car buyers under 25.

10. EMC: B2B social media effort that achieved business transformation by creating a global company-wide social community, EMC ONE. This connected and increased collaboration resulting in double-digit revenue growth in more than 60 countries.

11. EMERSON SALON: Saavy used combination of blogs, Facebook and Twitter to reach 75% of their customers and drive positive reviews on Yelp. This built business because 90% of all purchase decision begin on the internet and 85% are looking for an independent review. Co-Founder,  Matt  Buchon,  said  “it’s  rare  for  even  a  walk-in customer to come in  and  not  have  be  read  our  blog  or  seen  our  tweets.”  

12. FELA: Off Broadway play, Fela, created Facebook campaign, aimed at Facebook users with interests like theatrical shows or Afro beat. They spent $4,400 in time, management and Facebook ad costs and generated $40,000 in ticket sales for ROI of 9-to-1.

13. FISKARS: 300 year old Finnish company that makes fine cutting tool created online social community of crafting enthusiasts called “Friskateers”  to  reach  underutilized  

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channel of small retailers for a 3X increase in company sales. 14. FOILED CUPCAKES: Generated 93% of its business through social media leads to surpass

revenue target by +600% 15. GENERAL MOTORS: Launched “FastLane,”  one  of  the  first  blogs  personally  written  by  

senior executives. Customer feedback given through a blog saved the company $180,000/year versus traditional focus group research not to mention the enormous good will of company executives responding to consumers, not a focus group moderator.

16. H&R BLOCK: Tax preparation is a highly seasonal business. H&R used Facebook and Twitter to provide immediate access to a tax professional for Q&A in the “Get  It  Right”  social media campaign. The effort secured 1,500,000 unique visitors and answered 1,000,000 questions for a 15% lift in business versus the prior year when there was no social  media  “Get  It  Right”  program.  

17. KFC (BAD EXECUTION BUT HONORABLE BEHAVIOR): Ran coupon promotion on Facebook and Twitter for a Free Grilled Chicken dinner. High value resulted in coupons passed around virally on the internet and KFC franchises ran out of food; yet, they honored everyone who came with a coupon, eventually, and people appreciated their responsible behavior. Check out Starbucks for a similar promotion and a company who didn’t behave so responsibly.

18. JIMMY CHOO: Best  known  as  a  designer  for  women’s  shoes,  Jimmy  Choo  used  Twitter  to geo-locate and feature upscale stores where their sneakers were available and saw a +33% increase in sneaker sales, a 40% increase in positive mentions and 4,000 participants in his Twitter effort.

19. JOHNSON&JOHNSON (BABYCENTER.COM)8 year old online/social media community connected and engaged 8,000,000 new and expectant moms in the U.S. (78% of total) and another 16.5 million in 21 countries. A major profit center for J&J and, in fact, a major social brand.

20. JOIE DE VIVRE: A company that operates 33 luxury hotels in California on Tuesday nights broadcasted special $79/night deals to its Twitter account of 10,000 followers and Facebook page of 5,000 fans. It booked roughly 1,000 rooms that would have stayed empty with virtually no investment.

21. JUSTIN BOOTS: Attributed 95% of sales to social media on a budget that was half of traditional media.

22. KINAXIS: B2B supply chain management company used 18 employee bloggers and focused on category thought leadership and it generated over 42,000,000 leads. That’s  2,180,000 per blogger.

23. KRAFT (TOLBERONE): In the Phillipines, Kraft wanted to make Toblerone, a Swiss chocolate bar, synonymous with gratitude. The company established October 20  as  the  country’s  National  Thank  You  Day. Website, http://www.thankyoudayphilippines.com/museum, and social network outposts

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generated nearly 500,000 hits and Toblerone sales escalated 132%. 24. MARS (PEDIGREE): As part of integrated “Pedigree  Adoption  Drive,”  Pedigree  created  

“Become  a  fan,  help  a  dog”  Facebook  group. When campaign started, there were 55,000 fans. At the end, there were 1,000,000+. In terms of involvement, users sent 6,000  photos,  50  videos,  1,000’s  of  comments  and,  most  important,  made  donationfor  1,100,000 bowls of dog food.

25. PAGANUM FARMERS MARKET: Small network of UK farmers proved blogs and social network advertising produced better return on investment than any other online or offline consideration.

26. PETCO: Leveraged the voice of their customers by implementing the Bazaarvoice Ratings&Reviews solution, which went live on their site. As a results, website clicks were nearly 5 times higher, Top-Rated Products category had a 49% higher conversion rate and customers  spending  saw  a  growth  of  nearly  63%  on  PETCO’s  top-rated products.

27. PIPERSPORT AIRPLANES: Sold $140,000 airplanes online through search optimized video content and social networks. The sale of the 1st plane drove ROI through the roof.

28. QUICKEN: Launched social community and blogger outreach to build long-term relationships with future and potential customers and provided free credit reports/scores, home value report and mortgage recommendations. Quizzle.com received over 425,000 visits and 70,000 accounts were created without a dollar spent in traditional advertising.

29. STARBUCKS (BAD EXECUTION AND BAD BEHAVIOR): Like KFC (above), Starbucks ran limited duration coupons through social media in limited markets. Coupons spread virally on social networks but  Starbucks,  unlike  KFC  above),  wouldn’t  honor  them. So Caribou Coffee did, instead. Their competitors gained a lot of new customers who better taste in their mouth for Caribou than Starbucks.

30. UNILEVER (AXE):Launched an online contest through social media and created a website, AXERide.com, for registrants to interact. The contest directed contestants to upload a digital photo of his car and explain in a short essay how tricking out a car would help them get the girl. AXE received more than 30,000 visits and four times the number of entries as compared to previous AXE competitions.

31. VITABIOTICS: Health supplements manufacturer builds community of 13,000 that it uses for learning, insights and trial of new products prior to going to market. Product trials have  95%  completion  rate  and  save  the  company  $100,000’s  annually  versus  traditional research and test marketing.

32. WET SEAL: E-commerce  teen  clothing  store  for  girls  created  “community”  section  on  the  web  site  for  users  to  design  their  own  clothes,  publish  for  reviews  and  leverage  “wisdom of  the  crowd.” They saw a 21% increase in revenue driven by a 10% increase in sales and a 10% increase in the average purchase per customer.

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33. WHOLE FOODS: Maintained 200 Facebook accounts and over 150 accounts. While the accounts have different topics, they all focus on business happenings supporting a clearly defined business strategy for social media.

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6 Social Media ROI case studies with something in common, courage

I’ve been to a good number of companies this year where there has been management resistance to social media. The most often cited reason is a perceived inability to prove ROI. Social Media Examiner says the #1 question companies ask is “How  do  I  measure  social  media  return  on  investment?” So, one week in September, I devoted an hour each day scouring the internet for case studies that prove social media ROI. In short order, I found 67 case studies. Not a small number and too many to fit into one blog post. I broke it into two, 33 case studies that prove social media ROI and 33 more case studies. In total, there were 66 case studies that prove social media ROI through hard metrics like:

Increased sales Shortened sales cycle Higher closing rate New leads Lower internal operating costs Decrease in customer issues.

Last week, I had the pleasure of teaching a class on social media ROI at Rutgers and highlighted case studies in each of these areas. Rutgers is among the first universities in the country to offer a Mini-MBA in Social Media Marketing. 10 other teachers covered key topics in other areas of social media as well. Questions from students made me realize, in addition to the numbers, all the case studies had one other characteristic in common: Courage. Here’s a sampling of the stories to explain why. 1. INCREASED SALES (AJ BOMBERS): After six month of break-even sales and no money for traditional marketing, Joe Sorge, the owner of AJ Bombers, a burger restuarant in Milwaukee, started using Twitter to attract customers. Within a year, weekly sales increased +60%. What happened? Joe  spoke  to  the  Rutgers’  class  via  Skype. Someone asked why start tweeting? In  Joe’s  case, he said,  “I  was  sacred.   I opened a restaurant in Milwaukee at the worst time in the worst economy since the Great Depression. I sat at my computer wondering how I could make this work. When I found people on Twitter talking about my restaurant and

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my  burgers,  I  jumped  in.” Good feedback from customers on Twitter helped build relationships  and  Twitter  followers  soon  accounted  for  75%  of  AJ  Bomber’s  customers. AJ Bombers now has 11,000+ Twitter followers, success with Foursquare, a ”Food  Wars” episode on the Travel Channel and the sales to go with it. Joe recently started a company with Chris Broganto help small businesses called Kitchen Table Companies with a show on The Pulse Network. Here’s  a  video  of a 2010 social media profile in courage. 2. SHORTENED SALES CYCLE ( BLENDTEC): In 2007, Blendtec, a company that manufactured blenders since the 1970ʹ′s was having flat sales. They produced commercials for YouTube that cost less than $1000. Company sales then increased +700%. The  “  Will  It  Blend”  commerials featured CEO Tom Dickson. Tom blended everything from broom handles to good balls to iPhones and iPads in Blendtec blender. For a product who benefit has to be seen to be believed, video was the perfect medium. Some of the commercials have been viewed over 9,000,000+ times. But the company took a big risk. They put their CEO out there where he could be viewed as either a charismatic presenter or a clown. The benefits of that risk, and the courage of the management team, are shown in the viewership numbers from Alexa once the commercials started on YouTube.

3. HIGHER CLOSING RATIOS: ( FISKARS): A 300 year old Finnish company that makes fine cutting tool created an online social community of crafting enthusiasts called “Friskateers” to reach the underutilized channel of small retailers. It resulted in a 3X increase in company sales. But  it  didn’t  begin  that  way. According to Suzanne Fanning, Director of Communications at Fiskars Americas, it started as a way to have an “emotional  bond  with  consumers.” Try selling that to a company of highly rational engineers. But once the community started swapping product stories and generating new ideas, resistance went away. Now, Fiskateers are a major company driver of innovation. Not to mention a major cost savings on traditional focus group research. 4. NEW LEADS ( FOILED CUPCAKES): A Chicago company that bakes cupcakes generated 93% of its business through social media leads to surpass revenue targets by +600%. But, the most impressive statistic is this company has no storefront (it sells only through a website) and no way for consumers to experience their product (before they buy) unless they establish a relationship with them through social media. In an interview with Beth Harte, owner Mari

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Luangrathsays,“we  know  every  single  one  of  our  customers  by  name.  We’ve  probably  had  a  good Twitteror Facebook conversation with them before  they  even  call  us.” That’s  courageous  customer relationship marketing. 5. LOWER OPERATING COSTS (IBM): Invested $100 million in company generated new product ideas and saw a return of $100 billion in total revenue for a 10-to-1 ROI with a 44.1% gross profit margin. Best of all, they did by relinquishing control and letting employees set up the own blogs and “crowdsourcing  ‘Jams’”  to  collaborate  with  one another globally. There was no IBM corporate blog or Twitter account but there were 17,000 internal blogs, 100,000 employees using internal blogs and as many as 500,000 participants in company crowd-sourcing  “jams.” IBM showed courage by relinquishing control. It generated a huge amount of cash. 6. DECREASE IN CUSTOMER ISSUES (BEST BUY): Imagine  if  you  said,  “I’m  going  to  poll  my customers on the customer  service  they  want  and  deliver  it  on  their  terms.” That’s  what  Best Buy did in creating the TwelpForce, an employee community customer service group that works through Twitter to answer customers questions and concerns. The employee community grew to 2,200 employees within 3 months and responded to over 13,000 customer questions, concerns, and opinions. The Twitter feed @twelpforce now counts over 32,000 followers and the number of questions averages 100-125 per day and is considered a key value-add by customers and the company. My guess is Best Buy is having a very good Christmas season so far with the help of TwelpForce. Colleagues tell me 2011 is likely to be a year where more companies embrace social media as a valuable marketing tool. The graph below from Google Trends indicates social media is here to stay. But  courage,  I’ve  learned  from these case studies that are something that always supersedes trends. Do you think courage plays a role in social media ROI?

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12 case studies prove social and traditional media work better together

The  image  above  is  of  one  hand  clapping.  Perhaps  it’s  coming  from  the  marketing  plan  that  relies on only one type of media. It makes sense social and traditional media would work better together but, as with any new form of marketing, social media has more to prove so the two are sometimes compared as if they were in competition. Here are 12 case studies that prove social and traditional media were meant to work together. 1. CLEVELAND CLINIC: Was not the first in healthcare to experiment in social media, but it achieved success where others failed. By structuring a cross-functional team to enable education, collaboration, and smart governance, Cleveland Clinic deepened engagement with its consumers around the globe– both providers and patients. They used Facebook and Twitter for daily wellness tips; LinkedIn for professional recruitment and YouTube for content on diseases and patient stories. Since the Cleveland Clinic established social media as a cross-functional discipline, it has seen a noticeable increase in website traffic, attendance at health lectures and new patients making and keeping appointments. 2. CLOROX: Used traditional media to communicate the many uses for bleach in the home but

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supplemented with social media to encourage usage in places outside the house. Clorox launched an online community, CloroxClassrooms.com, with blog and Twitter effort on Labor Day weekend at the beginning of the school year. The Twitter page was among the Top 10 trending topics over Labor Day weekend and the blog was recognized by the Marketing to Mom Coalition and mommy bloggers for excellence in terms of delivering sharable information. 2. COCA-COLA: Used social media strategically and achieved the strongest global marketing integration ever with Expedition 206, a social media promotion where a small group of travel ambassadors  went  to  206  countries  over  365  days  to  “generate  happiness”  and  published on social networks. It enabled global promotion execution and integration among 3,500 Coca-Cola marketers around the world. 4. COLGATE WISP: Changed the target for the launch of a new, disposable toothbrush, from the traditional Moms to young, urban men and women 18-25 who were active daters. They supplemented the traditional media plan with 8 ”Be  More  Kissable”  viral  videos.  They  created  a  Facebook  App  called  “Spin  the  Wisp”  and  partnered  with  8  online  publishers.  The  videos  received over 4.1 million views and the App was downloaded over 40,000+ times. Colgate learned  the  value  of  engagement  because  Colgate’s  U.S.  market  share  in  the  toothbrush  category increased 5.6 points to a record 35.6% driven largely by the Wisp. 5. FORD FIESTA: Gave 100 consumers a car for six months and asked them to complete a different mission every month. At the direction of Ford and their own imagination, “agents”  used their Fiestas to deliver Meals On Wheels. They used them to take Harry And David treats to the National Guard. They went looking for adventure, some to wrestle alligators, others actually to elope. All of these stories were then lovingly documented on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. Fiesta got 6.5 million YouTube views and 50,000 requests for information about the car—-virtually none from people who already had a Ford in the garage. Ford sold 10,000 units in the first six days of sales. The results came at a relatively small cost. The Fiesta Movement is reputed to have cost a small fraction of the typical national TV campaign. 6. FRITO-LAY: Launched “What’s  You  Flavor”  contest,  as  part  of  an  integrated  campaign,  where  social media was used as the vehicle for consumers to capture the diverse flavors and the diversity  of  people’s  imagination  in  India.  It  leveraged  the  Frito  Lays  brand  as  a  household  name  in India in a way that connected emotionally. The campaign attracted more than 500 press coverage  worth  54  crores,  the  biggest  in  Frito  Lay  India’s  history. 7. H&R BLOCK: Has learned in the weeks prior to April 15th, every question that is not answered immediately is a lost sales. Tax preparation is a highly seasonal business. H&R used Facebook  and  Twitter  to  provide  immediate  access  to  a  tax  professional  for  Q&A  in  the“Get  It  Right”  social  media  campaign. The effort secured 1,500,000 unique visitors and answered 1,000,000 questions for a 15% lift in business versus the prior year when there was no social media in the marketing mix. 8. HARLEY DAVIDSON: (HDTalking.com) : Harley owners created a website and social community totally funded by users and user-generated content. Here, Harley owners trades photos, jokes, where to find hard to find parts, advice on Harley models and ownership plus

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there are at least 7 mechanics on-call at all times. HDtalking.com nowhas 56,000+ and cost to Harley is negligible. 9. HOULIHAN’S: Showed that social media drives ROI for small businesses. The restaurant showed  that  social  technologies  can  be  used  in  different  ways  to  drive  customers.  Houlihan’s in the U.S. has around 100 restaurants, compared to their main competitor Applebees, which has over 2,000. With a small marketing budget, their marketing manager managed to drive sales directly  from  a  private  social  network,  run  via  Ning.  The  network  was  called  ‘HQ’  and  was  launched in early 2008. By combining their social media campaign with email marketing, they managed  to  quickly  build  up  10,000  members  and  estimated  that  “7,000  to  13,000  people  heard  about  our  newest  promotion  because  of  an  HQ  member”.  This  shows  the  strength  in  running your own social network and how sometimes a private network may be the way to go, to offer people exclusivity and also encourage word of mouth. 10. JETBLUE: Started a Twitter account to have more direct relationship with customers and to listen and respond how they could serve them better and deal directly with any complaints. They now have over 1.6 million followers. 11. MTV: Premiered Skins —- an Americanized version of the acclaimed British teen drama. In addition to traditional media and Skins.tv, a central community regularly updated with content (including trailers and sneak peeks), a Tumblr blog – we are skins, Twitter handle –@skinsTV and a Facebook Fan Page, MTV used a number of innovative social apps to develop awareness and brand affinity for the show: Skins drew 3.26 million total viewers, outperforming the launches of competitive scripted shows across both cable and network in its core demo (12-34),  including  CW’s  “Gossip  Girl”  and  ABC  Family’s  “Pretty  Little  Liars.” 12. OLD SPICE: Managed to gather some pretty impressive stats that show the money where the buzz is. The reach of the Old Spice campaign is not in doubt, but did it actually impact sales? Since the original campaign launched with  ‘Mustafa’,  sales  increased  by  27%  year  on  year.  But  in the 3 months after the height of the campaign, sales were up by 55%, reaching 107% in the final month of the social media campaign. And of course, Old Spice is now the #1 body wash brand for men. However you choose to look at the campaign, these figures stand up to show that a social media campaign, well executed and combined with traditional media, can drive significant ROI. Do these case studies prove social and traditional media work better together to you?

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What is the ROI of Walmart's Facebook page? A lot by many measures

Walmart accounts for 1 in every 5 consumer packaged goods products sold in America. For a brand with this much retail clout, what sort of ROI do you think they get from their Facebook page? A lot by many measures. Consider this. 1. BY ONE ESTIMATE, WALMART’S  FACEBOOK  PAGE IS WORTH $586,787,180. According to WOMMA, the average value of a Facebook fan is $71.84 and Walmart has 8,167,973 fans. Facebook fans of a brand are 28% more likely to continue using the brand and 41% more likely to recommend it to a friend. $71.84 is an average. It’s  generally  higher  for  well  known  brands.

2.  WALMART  HAS  11,366“CHECK  INS;” THAT’S  A  GROUP  OF  LOYAL  CUSTOMERS  WAITING  TO  HEAR ABOUT SPECIALS. Facebook  “Check-Ins” let retailers offer deals based  on  people’s  Facebook Check-Ins when they visit. You can run Check-In deals across multiple store locations, and create different types of deals to achieve different business objectives. Imagine how this can boost business.

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3. 40% OF CONSUMERS VISIT A  RETAILER’S  FACEBOOK  PAGE  BEFORE  THEIR  WEBSITE  AND  THE  AVERAGE NUMBER OF RETAILERS THEY FOLLOW IS 6. These statistics come from Shop.org. Are consumers buying from social networks after they visit? See for yourself.

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4. THERE ARE HIGH LEVELS OF CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT RELATED TO SALES. Walmart posts roughly 2X/day. Most of their posts are product related and conservatively get over 1000+ Likes and Comments each. Here is a post about a special deal on an iPad. Since 80% of people who are shopping on the internet right now are looking for reviews and recommendations, do you think this post generated sales?

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5. WALMART IS SAVINGS ON MARKET RESEARCH AND TRACKING OUT-OF-STOCKS. What do consumers think of Klondike Bars and can they find them in their local Walmart. You could spend a lot of money on market research and product tracking software or you could ask them on Facebook  for  free.  Plus,  you’d  see  results  a  lot  faster.

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If  you  spend  time  on  Walmart’s  Facebook  page,  you’ll  notice  that  not  everyone  is  a  fan  of  Walmart which I credit Walmart for publishing. There are also a good number of more targeted Walmart retail Facebook site that serve  as  further  testimony  of  Facebook’s  sales  value. There are manpower costs for Walmart to maintain, track and measure results. Based on the numbers, my guess is the people at Walmart believe the ROI is worth it. If you manufacture a product with retail distribution, have you considered the value of a relationship with your retailers on their Facebook pages?

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16 case studies that prove Social CRM

Many expect Social CRM to be a hot phrase in 2011. It should be because the three most influential factors a person uses to decide whether or not to do business with a company are: Personal  experience  (98%)Company’s  reputation  or  brand  (92%)Recommendations  from  friends  and family (88%) Source: Cone Business in Social Media Study, 2008 Since Social media amplifies all three, it makes sense the  terms,  “Social”  and  “CRM,”  belong  together. I’m  a  big believer in Social CRM but I think the phrase is still being defined. One reason is the graphic above. It’s  very  good  but it is shows Social CRM as a concept that requires visualization to be explained. Another reason is two very smart people, when asked, give different answers. Paul Greenberg,  author  and  leading  authority  on  SCRM,  stated  that  Social  CRM  is“…..designed  to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide a mutually beneficial value  in  a  trusted  and  transparent  business  environment.  It’s  the  company  response to the customer’s  owning  of  the  relationship.”

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Michael Fauschette says: “Social  CRM  is  the  tools  and  processes  that  encourage  better,  more  effective customer interaction and leverage the collective intelligence of the broader customer community with the intended result of increasing intimacy between an organization and its prospects and customers. The goal is to make the relationship with the customer more intimate and tied to the company by building a public ecosystem to better understand what they want and how they interact with the various company touchpoints like sales, customer service etc…..” I favor a more matter-of-fact definition: Social CRM = a 1-to-1 sales relationship that occurs through social media and is profitable, sustainable and built on trust. To substantiate, here are 16 case studies that prove Social CRM.

1. AFTER STEAZ: When an organic tea company started talking on Facebook and Twitter about why teas that are organic matter, consumer listened. In fact they not only listened, they bought the product and sales doubled. When downloadable coupons were then offered on these social networks, 250,000 were downloaded and 2,830 tweets were recorded in an hour.

2. BARACK OBAMA: Social media campaign for the President on My.BarackObama.comraised $30,000,000 from over 70,000 personal fund-raising pages, 400,000 blogs, 35,000 groups and 200,000 offline events. Based on approval ratings, it also was probably the time when trust in the President was highest.

3. BEST BUY (Twelp Force): Best Buy employee communities grew to 2,200 employees within 3 months and responded to over 13,000 customers on social networks answering public questions, concerns, and opinions. The Twitter feed @twelpforcenow counts over 29,000 followers and the number of questions averages 100-125 per day and is considered a key value-add by customers and the company

4. CLOROX: Launched online community, CloroxClassrooms.com, with blog and Twitter effort on Labor Day weekend at the beginning of the school year. Twitter page was among the Top 10 trending topics over Labor Day weekend and blog was recognized by the Marketing to Mom Coalition and mommy bloggers for excellence in terms of delivering trusted, sharable information.

5. COMCAST:  Started“  Comcast  Cares”Twitter customer service center and attracted 2,700 followers. More important, from a Social CRM standpoint, many who were critics of the company changed to raving fan. Quality of attention and dialogue now serves as model for the the company.

6. DR. VAKSMAN: Local Dentist with five month old dental practice in San Francisco attracted 320 new clients through social media presence including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

7. FISKARS: 300 year old Finnish company that makes fine cutting tool created online social community of crafting enthusiasts called “Fiskateers”to built relationships

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with underutilized channel of small retailers for a 3X increase in company sales. 8. FOILED CUPCAKES: A Chicago company that sells cupcakes has no store front, only a

web site. When the product was readay but the launch of the website was delayed, they relyed on Facebook and Twitter for CRM. Social media generated 93% of its business through social media leads to surpass revenue target by +600%. The reason: You can tweet all day long. You can update your Facebook page all day long. But are people  listening?  They’ll  listen  if  they  know  you  care  about  them.  So  my  personal  mandate is that I reply to every single tweet and make a comment on every single post to  our  Facebook  page,”  says  owner  Mari  Luangrath.  

9. GENERAL MOTORS: Launched “Fast Lane,” one of the first blogs personally written by senior executives. Customer feedback given through a blog saved the company $180,000/year versus traditional focus group research not to mention the enormous good will of company executives responding to consumers, not a focus group moderator

10. GREEN BAY PACKERS: The Green Bay Packers Foundation is a philanthropic organization developed to give back to  Green  Bay’s  Special  Olympics,  Pop  Warner  Football,  Feed  the Children and other community causes. They do  this  through  the  player’s  personal  stories and the sales of 4,000 Packers signed merchandise items at auctions. They’ve  built a Facebook presence of 221, 843 fans and a Twitter following of14,682. More important, in 2009, they generated $248,000,000 in a town of 106,000 for an average sale of $2,340 per citizen.

11. H&R BLOCK: Tax preparation is a highly seasonal business. H&R used Facebook and Twitter to provide immediate access to a tax professional for Q&A in the “Get  It  Right”social media campaign. The effort secured 1,500,000 unique visitors and answered 1,000,000 questions for a 15% lift in business versus the prior year when there  was  no  social  media  “Get  It  Right”  program  

12. HARLEY DAVIDSON (HD TALKING): Harley owners created website and social community totally funded by users and user-generated content. Here, Harley owners trades photos, jokes, where to find hard to find parts, advice on Harley models and ownership plus there are at least 7 mechanics on-call at all times. HDtalking.com now has 40,000+ members and cost to Harley is negligible.

13. INDIUM:  A  company  that  manufactures  special  alloys  isn’t  sexy;   neither is convincing 14 of its engineers to start blogs. But that exactly what the company does. It increased leads, prospects, conversions and sales by double digits plus it gave customers the  opportunity  to  know  the  company’s  employees  personally.  

14. JOHNSON&JOHNSON (BABYCENTER.COM): 8 year old online/social media community connected and engaged 8,000,000 new and expectant moms in the U.S. (78% of total) and another 16.5 million in 21 countries. A major profit center for J&J and, in fact, a major social brand.

15. QUICKEN: Launched social community and blogger outreach to build long-term relationships with future and potential customers and provided free credit reports/scores, home value report and mortgage recommendations. Quizzle.com

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received over 425,000 visits and 70,000 accounts were created without a dollar spent in traditional advertising.

16. TURBO TAX: TeamTurboTax launched Twitter campaign to respond and answer questions during key tax season and found customers were 71% more likely to recommend TurboTax because of their interactions with the company through Twitter.

Regardless of how it is defined, do these 16 case studies prove Social CRM to you?

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10 case studies prove ROI of Search Engine Optimization

Consider these facts: 80% of consumers find your website by first writing a query into a box on a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing)42% chose the first site listed in organic search90% choose a site listed on the first page These facts suggest, for anyone doing business on the internet, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a first orders of business.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website in search engines via  the  “natural,”  or  un-paid  (“organic”  or  “algorithmic”), search results, as defined by

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Wikipedia. Although there are plenty of SEO case studies, it can be hard to find case studies that directly prove return on investment (ROI). In the quest for a top rank on Google and increased website traffic,  it’s  easy  to  forget  the  most  essential  question  to  ask:  What  action(s) do you want consumers to take when they get to your website? To  show  what’s  achievable,  here  are  10  case  studies  that  prove  the  ROI  of  SEO 1. COMPLETE PLUMBING SOURCE: An e-commerce online source for homeowners and do-it-yourself plumbers who want quality and affordable plumbing supplies and tools from leading brands, completeplumbingsource.com’s number one goal was to drive targeted traffic to their site and generate product sales through a seamless online buying process. Keyword discovery led to an optimization of the top revenue-producing pages and landing page optimization. Within four months, website traffic increased +169%, conversion increased +202% and sales increased by +300%. 2. DICKIES: An online store for Dickies Work Wear focused on the quality and quantity of organic search traffic. They focused on keywords and phrase for those reaching the DickiesStore  website  with  “Dickies”  related  phrases  as  well  as  more  generic  phrases  such  as  “workwear”  and  “safety  boots”  etc.  Within  six  months, Dickies Store dominated the SERP’S  (Search Engine Results Page) for “Dickies”  related  keywords;  an  extremely  competitive  niche  in  which many suppliers of the Dickies brand are constantly competing for top rankings. Within a year, the SEO strategy resulted in an increase of 63% in non-branded traffic and 47% increase in sales. 3. DOLLAR DAYS: An online e-commerce wholesaler that helps smaller businesses compete against larger chain, dollardays.com used videos for its eclectic product offering to capture long tail  key  words.  They  also  video  indexed  each  product  video  for  Google’s search algorithms using a video sitemap. The result was a huge and immediate +75% increase in sales. 4. ENTREPRENEUR: Sought to increase site traffic and downloads of it huge number of articles at entrepreneur.com.  That’s  because  increases  in  site  traffic  and  involvement increased advertising rates and revenues. They instituted an SEO program in three stages: In Stage 1, they optimized the web page. In Stage 2, they optimized keywords, links and content for descriptions of the articles. In Stage 3, they integrated SEO into the entire business process. The result was an estimated return of over $2 million dollars PER MONTH (calculated by determining the revenue from additional number of click-throughs since they began the SEO program, minus the SEO expenses incurred). 5. MILLENIUM HOTELS: A prominent hotel chain with over 110 hotels and resorts located in over 60 different destinations in 18 countries, Millenium used SEO to: 1) Achieve higher placements for highly competitive generic search phrase, 2) attract seasonal traffic and 3) promote seasonal offers online. Within a year, Millenium saw increases of: 1) 250,000 visitor

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per month, 2) 84% in organic traffic and 3) 70% in online reservations bookings. 6. PHILLYDENTIST.COM: Dr. Ken Cirka, DMD, had no relevant keywords on his website in the areas of title tags, body copy, and headers, some of the most important factors in search engine rankings for on-site optimization. During this time, he received one new patient per week. However, after making these changes, he rose to the #1 position for the keywords, “Philadelphia  dentist,”  and  received nine new patients each week. Nine month later, Dr. Cirka hired another dentist and additional staff. 7. ROTTEN TOMATOES: A movie review site that started out as a hobby, rottentomatoes.comwas built by SEO. The Rotten Tomatoes team observed that most people searched for movie reviews by searching on the movie name or for actors in a film, not for a movie review itself. Therefore Rotten Tomatoes architected the site to give each individual movie its own Rotten Tomatoes mini-site to boost natural search rankings. The SEO strategy was  so  successful  that  features  such  as  “Tomatometer”  are  now a high volume keyword and Rotten Tomatoes is one of the top 5 movie review sites in the world. 8. VICTORIA INN: a resort inn in a unique heritage building on the south shore of Rice Lake at Gore’s  Landing,  Ontario. Victoria Inn wanted to use its website as a reservation sales tool to attract new bookings for the inn. For the broadest possible sales and bookings, the keyword phrases needed to work withlocal and regional geographical locator terms. Victoria Inn achieved more than 370 top ten ranking positions and 152 #1 ranking for an 85% increase in reservations bookings. 9. VOICES.COM: One of the leading marketplaces for voice-over talent, voices.com studied competitive sites, keywords, visitor intensions between those looking to hire and those looking to hire voice-over talent. The resulting site overhaul and SEO keyword discovery increased conversions rates on the site by 400%. 10. WATER GALLERY: An internet-only business that offers handcrafted, indoor water fountains that are designed to fit on walls or floors and made with stones, pebbles and marble, watergallery.net did a full site redesign to make it more search engine friendly and added PayPal buttons so people could pay online. Sales increased +500% within 6 months and gross margin increased +300%. These case studies prove, whether company is large or small, selling something that is familiar or new, SEO is foundational for business building. But the #1 priority is focus on the desired business because SEO strategies and tactics vary based  on  a  business’s  goals.  If  you’re  clear  about who you want to attract and the action(s) you want  them  to  take  on  your  once  they  get  to  your  site,  you’ll  see  the  results  and  ROI  a  lot  faster. What do these 10 case studies on the ROI of SEO prove to you?

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12 case studies that prove Social Commerce ROI

Social commerce is the merger of social media and ecommerce. It’s a marketing combination  that’s  here  to  stay because it aligns with our buying behaviors.

90 times in any given week people mention a specific brand 90% of consumers trust recommendation from people they know 70% trust recommendations from others even it they don’t  know  them 83% of consumers share information from people they know 81%  says  they’ve  received  advice  on  a  product  purchase  from  friends  or  followers  on  a  

social network site74% say that advice was influential 71% claims reviews from family members and friends exert a great deal of influence on

what we buy 67% of consumers spend more online after receiving recommendations from friends 61% of people rely on information from reviews when making a purchase decision 14% of people trust advertising

Sources: Econsultancy, eMarketing, ClickZ, Internet Retailer, Bazaarvoice Social commerce provides strong evidence of social media ROI because direct sales occur on social sites. In recent years and even months, the numbers of apps and vehicles to enable social commerce has skyrocketed. The social network to show the greatest social commerce innovation is Facebook where the Like Buttonand plug-ins such as login-in with Facebook, recommendations, activity feed, registrations, Live Stream, other social plug-insand the Facebook Store create a rich customer experience where people with similar interests share brand affinities with the convenience of making purchases without ever having to leave Facebook. As a result, there is a sub-set of social commerce called f-commerce and companies like Coca-Cola, Disney and P&G are actively involved. There are the deal-of-the-day social networks, Grouponand Living Socialand other social couponing sites. Not to mention apps like Wildfireand Involver that, when added to social network sites like

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Facebook, Twitter and the company blog, provide coupons, offers and promotions to accelerate social commerce adoption. But,  if  you’re  still not convinced, here are 12 case studies that prove Social Commerce return on investment (ROI). 1 BEST BUY: Discovered their core users and heaviest purchasers were Facebook users. Merely by asking for consumers to come check them out on Facebook with no offer or coupon, their fans went from 27,000 to 163,000. Within 9 days, sharing took the size of the community and their heavy user base from 163,000 to 900,000. Best Buy has 3,281,961 Facebook Fans and WOMMAestimates the value of a Facebook Fan is $72.

2. CARS.COM: Does not sell directly to consumers but puts consumers in control by giving them information on cars from other consumers. In  examining  the  impact  of  other  consumers’  

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recommendations, pages on the website that had reviews and ratings were compared to those that did not and showed:+16% conversion increase for pages with reviews and ratings+100% increase in traffic to locations for dealers+45 increase in consumers seeking financing options

3. DERRYNOID CENTRE: A 40 suite conference and training center in Northern Ireland used Groupon to offer a 60% discount if a voucher was secured that day. The Derrynoid Centre saw:426 reservations from the offer88% of people fulfilled reservations for hotel stay+26% sustained increase in bar and restaurant sales resulted from the effort. The Groupon business model may not be for every business. Here’s  how  it  works. Groupon insists there be at least a 50% discounts off the full rate and Groupon takes 50% of each sale. But it does seem suited for a small business with low awareness where unfilled seats, rooms or idle workers create a financial drain that could otherwise be putto use.

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4. EVENTBRITE: Sharing  is  one  of  Eventbrite’s  most  effective  revenue  generators.   When someone shares an event with their friends through social media, the action results in real dollars. Recent data shows that over the past 12 weeks, one share on Facebook equals $2.52, a share on Twitter equals $0.43 and ashare on LinkedIn equals $0.90. In one year Facebook went from being the 15th top driver of traffic to Eventbrite to the number one driver to the site. Eventbrite had over 17 million average monthly page views in 2010.

5. MOVIEFONE: Executed a full scale Facebook implementation using Login with Facebook, Graph API, Events API, Like Button and the Activity Feed to enable social sharing and engagement. Consumers could connect with their Facebook friends on the Moviefone site pushing unique content and driving traffic. The results were:300% increase in site traffic40,000 to 250,000 increase in referrals per month40% increase in click-through-rateAverage user click back to the Moviefone site 7X

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6. OFFICE DEPOT: Incorporated consumer reviews into their website around specific products. Then, they initiated paid search with the keywords consumer used in reviews. The result were:+78.5% increase in click-through rate+23.8% increase in conversion+196.6% gain in revenue+183.3% increase in new buyers. 7. PREMIERE BEAUTY: Beauty Salon offered 60% off through Groupon and turned beauty into a social business with:500 new customers85% of customer now come through social media because the store uses Facebook and Twitter to promote offers

8. SHOE DAZZLE: Leveraged Facebook Pages, Like buttons and Graph API to import friends who shared the ShoeDazzle shopping and discovery experience with other friends. It resulted in100,000ʹ′s of Likes600% increase in SharesFacebook user showed greater loyalty and bought

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more than non-Facebook users

9. SPORTING NEWS: Implemented recommendations plugin on their Facebook page to provide a simple and intuitive way for people to share articles from Sporting News back and saw:2X increase in site traffic within 3 monthsFacebook goes from 16th to Top 3 referrer in site traffic+30% increase in subscriptions

10. STARBUCKS: For a business that is primarily offline, Starbucks uses social commerce to gain an incremental online business with an advocacy component through their loyalty club, MyStarbuckRewards. They offer special high-end blends to the members of luxury bounty hunter, Gilt.com. They set up social social commerce on Facebook that enables purchases from smart phones. The activity show Starbucks believes social commerce is a significant source of business.

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11. STUDIO PE: Pilates Studio used LivingSocial and changed its business model from personal sales to include group buys. Owner, Carla Vercoe, claimed, before LivingSocial, no advertisement that she or the previous owner ever tried worked. 12. TRIP ADVISOR: Displayed  friend’s  reviews  and  opinions  on  Facebook that are directly relevant to planning and conversion. Implemented Like button and other sharing functionality to help users share their experiences with their friends and saw:2X more content contribution from Facebook users than non-Facebook users20% in site engagementTrip Advisor saw a direct correction between greater site engagement and increased conversion

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In addition to showing ROI, these case studies demonstrate how social media and the tools now available are transitioning businesses that traditionally operated offline to online sales at group multiples; all to the betterment of their revenue and profitability. Do you think your business might benefit from Social Commerce?

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12 digital and social media case studies that prove Customer Service ROI

Digital and social media are held to highly accountable standards when it comes to return on investment (ROI). For the last two years, Social Media Examinerreports the #1 question marketers  ask  about  social  media  is“How  do  I  measure  social  media  return  on  investment?” On  this  blog,  we’ve  highlighted over 100 case studies(see related posts at the bottom) and believe digital and social media demonstrate the proven principles of relationship marketing better than any other communication channel, particularly when it comes to customer service. If there are people in your company who still need convincing, here are 12 digital and social media case studies that prove Customer Service ROI. 1. ACCOR: has over 4000 hotels in 90 countries and has to manage over 5000 comments each month on sites such as TripAdvisor.comand Bookings.com. The company wants to listen, learn and engage with what customers are saying about the Accor brand and approximately 12,000 competitors’  hotels  so  it  can  then  establish  dashboards  to  act  on  the  data.  Accor  has  found  this  type of customer service  not  only  improves  the  company’s  online  reputation,  it  results  in  double-digit sales increases for key brands like Novotel. 2. ALASKA AIR: Is the first carrier in the world to let customers check-in from the internet and at self-service kiosks. Traditionally, weather delays and cancellation cause airlines to pull agents off inbound sales calls and handle affected customers. The result is many customers are not

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handled effectively or in time plus new bookings are lost. The internet provided a more time sensitive way to personally handle affected passengers without tying up sales staff. The result: Revenue and ROI increased because each customer costs 54 cents to re-ticket over the internet versus $1.60 on a live call; live agents can handle only 500 calls/hour while their web site can handle 20,000 calls/hour; just as important, not one negative comment occurred when the company made this switch. 3. AT&T: Has over 1.6 million fans on their Facebook page and a staff of 20 to engage, manage conversations and, when appropriate, encourage sales. The company trains and educates this team.  Surveys  show  AT&T’s  Facebook staff gets some of their best customer service ratings while  also  delivering  some  of  the  company’s  highest  sales  per  employees. 4. BEST BUY (Twelp Force): Gives employees the opportunity to help consumers on Twitter. Participation is voluntary and the community grows to 2,200 employees within 3 months. They respond to over 13,000 customers on Twitter answering questions, concerns, and opinions. The Twitter feed @twelpforce now counts over 40,000 followers and the number of questions averages 100-125 per day. It is considered a key value-add by customers and the company. 5. CARE ONE DEBT RELIEF SERVICES: Opens an online community on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in 2009 to help consumers with questions about debt relief, consolidation and budgeting. By going directly to social networks, there is no registration process and the company’s  staff  is  able  to  give  them  a  faster  response.  Lead  generation  is  179%  higher,  forms  are completed 6X faster, customers make their first payment at a rate that was 7X better than non-social media customers. 6. COMCAST: Much has been written about @ComcastCaresand the way Frank Eliason helped the company better handle the 3 million customer service calls (most unhappy) the company gets each year through blogs and Twitter with 3 simple words: Can I help? The company reviews 6000 blog posts and about 2000 Tweets each day to service more customers in a better and  faster  way  than  traditional  inbound  service.  Here’s  Frank  explaining just what Comcast did. 7. DIRECTV: Has problems with churn among its 18.5 U.S. customers as more cable service develop a presence in satellite-based television. The best way to reduce churn is to increase customer satisfaction and one way to do it is optimize field technician routes for the 600,000 service calls received each day. DIRECTV implements Oracle GoldenGate to consolidate disparate data marts into a central warehouse. This improves the timeliness, granularity, and accuracy of customer and service data. It enables managers and more than 15,000 call center agents to conduct real-time data queries and analysis throughout the day—-using dashboards, e-mail delivery, and end-user reporting tools—-eliminating the reliance on outdated weekly or monthly reports. 8. FORD: The way we buy cars is changing. A 2011 survey of 2,485 consumers found that 28% visit websites five times or more during their car-buying process but only 11% visit dealerships that many times. Ford, in the UK, designs a multi-channel contact and lead management system based on its intelligentContact (iContact) platform. It manages every customer contact and increases agent efficiency by 25%. Where some calls used to take a minute to answer, now they are answered within 20 seconds.

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9. H&R BLOCK: Tax preparation is a highly seasonal business. H&R uses Facebook and Twitter to  provide  immediate  access  to  a  tax  professional  for  Q&A  in  the“Get  It  Right”  social  media  campaign. The effort secures 1,500,000 unique visitors and answers 1,000,000 questions for a 15%  lift  in  business  versus  the  prior  year  when  there  was  no  social  media  “Get  It  Right”  program.  Here’s  how  Amy  Worley  explains how the company got it right. 10. LENOVA: Sees customers are talking about its products in third-party forums and is worried about being left out of these important conversations. Using a peer-to-peer support community in social media, Lenovo listens to customer experiences and establishes ownership of any problem. The results: 20% reduction in laptop support call rates, an increase in agent productivity, a shortened problem resolution cycle, and an increase in Net Promoter Scores…..plus  ideas  from  the  community  result  in  new  product  innovations. 11. MACY’S: Handles 130 orders every minute online from over 1,000,000 unique visitors every day. Macys.com and Bloomingdales.comlink production to online orders and give access to 100 employees to optimize customer flow. For the first  time,  Macy’s  experiences  no  downtime  during holiday peak period and increases online sales +40% for December and 29% for the year. 12. SETON HALL UNIVERSITY: relies on tuition for revenue. They discover incoming freshmen are forming lasting impressions about  colleges  by  reading  a  university’s  Facebook  page  before  they  go  to  university’s  website.  Seton  Hall  gets  actively  involved  in  Facebook  conversations  to  answers questions, participate in discussions and guide potential incoming freshmen. They tag the web traffic coming from Facebook to the website. Tuitions coming from Facebookare +18% and deposits are +25% than those who do not consult Facebook. We’ve  produced  results  like these for our client and have case studies of our own to share on the  website.  We’re  proud  of  the  results  and  ROI  achieved and the demonstration these business  principles  work.  We’d  be  glad  to  share  what  we  see  working  so  effectively in the marketplace for your brand. Do these digital and social media case studies prove Customer Service ROI to you?

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How 12 companies built trust using Twitter for customer service

It  takes  2X  as  much  to  get  a  new  customer  as  it  costs  to  keep  an  existing  one.  Today…..71%  of  customers go online first when they have a problem with a product or a service (source: TNS). 21% more sales result to companies that use social media to address consumer complaints (versus 11% for traditional methods like email and phone) and consumers then tell 3X as many friends about their positive experiences (source: American Express) You can do the math but could social media be better at building trust? Here’s  what  12  companies learned using Twitter for customer service.

1. @AJBomber: Restaurant owner, Joe Sorge, uses Twitter for outreach and as an extra pair of eyes and ears to listen and respond to customers. As a results, 75% of customers come from Twitter; weekly sales increased +60% within a year and, today, AJBombers has 19,910 followers. Not bad for a restaurant with two locations in Wisconsin.

2. @AskCiti: Citibank uses this Twitter handle to send a link via Twitter direct message to the customer to start a live chat. Compared to navigating 800 number callback from the back  of  a  credit  card  to  a  live  operator  where“the  interactions  were  more  phone  tag.  We’re  getting  in  touch  with  the  customer  the  way  they  want.  It’s  something  that’s  easier and fits  the  customer’s  style,”  say  Frank  Eliason,  SVP  of  Social  Media.  (8.088  followers)

3. @AmericanExpress: American Express found consumers who begin a customer service

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dialogue  through  Twitter“are  willing  to  pay  a  21  percent  premium  at  companies  that  provide great service. Ultimately, getting a service right with these social media savvy consumers  can  help  a  business  grow,” says Jim Bush, an AmEx EVP.

4. @AskHalifaxBank: With no response from other channels, an angry customer resorted to Twitter: “Good  LORD  @askhalifaxbank  how  can  1  company  make  SUCH  a  mess  of  Isa  transfers?  I’m  on  hours  of  phonecalls,  branch  visits&still  not  sorted.”  She  got  a  response  within minutes her complaint had been forwarded and return tweet: “If  we  can  help  with  anything  in  future,  feel  free  to  tweet.”  She  says  she  would  use  Twitter  again.  

5. @ClevelandClinic: The Cleveland Clinic uses Twitter to dispense health advice to over 52,000 followers. In return, patients are better about keeping their appointments with physicians and the Cleveland Clinic has a noticeable increase in traffic to their website.

6. @FirstDirectHelp:  First  Direct  Bank  has“best  practices”  for  every  tweet  they  receive. “We  aim  to  respond  to  a  tweet  within  an  hour  and  whilst  it’s  difficult  to  put  a  figure on it, at the moment it has definitely improved the time to resolution, which was already  good,”  says  a  spokesperson.

7. @HRBlockAnswers: During tax season, a long response time can mean a lost customer. For  example,  @r_wett  tweeted  “HR  block,  how  is  it  that  the  FREE  SC  e-flie [sic]  costs  me  $30  to  file?”  A  short  seven  minutes  later,  @HRBlockAnswers  replied,  “@r_wett  Through  the  HRBlock  website,  Federal  returns can be completed for Free. Fees apply for states. In this case, the exchange andthe quality of the dialogue secured a new customer.

8. @LAFitnessUKHelp:  When  a  frustrated  customer  wanted  to  know  the  LA  Fitness’s  cancellation policy, he spent 15 minutes on hold and hung us. Instead, he asked on Twitter, and his tweet was answered within four minutes. He stayed a member.

9. @NetSolCares:  When  a  customer“eeded  to  update  a  client’s  website  which  is  hosted  on  Network Solutions. we are based in the UK. apparently, due to some DDOS attacks some IPs  (mostly  from  overseas)  have  been  blocked,”  she  “twittered  (tweeted?)  about  the  connection issues asking if anyone else was having the same problem.i was hoping to just get some additional information on what the problem may be, instead, i got a response  from  NetSol  support  within  the  hour.”  Her  Tweet  to  Gerry  was  followed  up  by  an email and phone call from Sam who fixed the problem within minutes. ”I  won’t  discuss whether i feel NetSolis a good host provider or not, but i will say i was incredibly impressed by their customer service, and i found out just how useful a simple tweet could  be.”  

10. @SouthwestAirlines: An angry customer tweets a complaint about her flight that ”Southwest=Suckage.”   She gets another tweet back and then another tweet days later  ask  how  her  return  flight  was.  “I  have  to  say  that  my  Southwest  Twitter  experience  wasn’t  just  a  single  fire  and  forget  incident  as  they  twittered  back  again  to  check  up  on  me,”  she  says.  

11. @Starbucks: To listen to customers and help with content management, Starbucks tweets:“Hello  Twitterville.  I  posted  some  news  stories  last  week.  Is  that  interesting  for  

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you.  I’m  here  for  you,  so  let  me  know  what  you  want  to  see.”  Couldn’t  any  brand  benefit  if they followed this tweeting practice?

12. @TwelpForce: Best Buy gives employees the opportunity to help consumers on Twitter voluntarily and the community grows to 2,200 employees within 3 months. They respond to over 13,000 customers on Twitter answering 100-125 questions, concerns, and opinions every day. The Twitter feed @twelpforce now counts over 44,000 followers and the number of questions averages 100-125 per day. Someone I know was waiting on line at the Best Buy Help Desk and had her issue resolved faster on @TwelpForce than in store.

Customer service “is  not  about  being  perfect,  it’s  about  the  response”  said  Deborah  Mitchell,  a  clinical associate professor of marketing at Ohio State University, in an interview with Smartmoney.com. “People  like to feel like the company was proactive in responding, and bent over  backwards  to  fix  it.” What do these lessons from 12 companies teach you?

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10 case studies prove ROI of social media promotion

Many  companies  want  consumers  to“Like”  them  on  Facebook  but  are  surprised  to  learn  the  #1  reason  people  would  be  motivated  to  “Like” them in the first place is to receive discounts and promotions.

Of all the words to convey a discount or promotion, the word this Black Friday and Cyber Monday  that  generated  the  most  engagement  was“coupons.”  (source:  Buddy Media and Marketing Profs)

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Promotions, discounts and coupons are tried-and-true ways to encourage trial and boost sales volume.When they are delivered in social media, they benefit from sharing and the efficiency of available apps, like Wildfire, that cost a small fraction of traditional methods. In our experience, social media promotions are some of the most effective, affordable and profitable ways to build business and brand advocacy simultaneously. You  don’t  have  to  go  to social promotion sites like Groupon or Living Social either. Although effective in some cases, their promotions require you discount your brand by 50%; then, they keep 50% of the remaining half leaving you with 25% of the original price. Imagination and resourcefulness are more effective and much more profitable. Need proof? Here are 10 case studies that prove Social Media Promotions ROI.

1. DELL: Started @DellOutlet, a Twitter page where they offered products and customer service through Twitter. Then, they integrated coupons. The Twitter page, which was free to set up, generated over $3 million dollar in sales to date and, with the integrations of coupons, accelerated to $1 million dollars within 6 months.

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2. EDIBLE ARRANGEMENTS. Through their Facebook page, Edible Arrangements offered consumers a voucher for free chocolate dipped strawberries. But to redeem the coupon, fans had to visit an Edible Arrangements store providing Edible Arrangements franchisees the opportunity to promote their store to a slew of new customers. This campaign generated 170,000 new fans and a double-digit increase in sales versus year ago.

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3. HAUTELOOK: Ran  an  “instand  win”  coupon  campaign  at  different  values.  After  becoming  a  fan of the Hautelook Facebook Fan Page, entrants were presented with a coupon but the value of each coupon was a surprise and ranged from 10% to 20%, and some had free shipping. Not only did Hautelook generate thousands of new fans they also generated tens of thousands of sales in just one day and a return on investment of more than 5x and over 20% of purchasers were first time Hautelook customers.

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4. JAMBA JUICE: Gave their customers a choice with “Feel  Good  Bucks”  and  a  unique  coupon  code  generation  functionality.  They  gave  out  ‘lucky’  coupons  via  our  Facebook  Connect  Product  and Facebook Fan Page Product that could be redeemed at Jamba Juice stores. When consumers redeemed the coupons they either received $1 off their purchase orthe opportunity to win instant or cash prizes of $10,000! Plus, users could send Jamba Bucks to their friends in the form of fun, Jamba-branded virtual gifts like smoothies, bucks, and cartoons. The coupon campaign drove tens of thousands to Jamba Juice stores.

5. KRAFT MACARONI&CHEESE: Used Twitter to encourage people, in their “Mac  and  Jinx”campaign, to tweet something with the phrase “mac&cheese”  in  it  at  the  same  time.  Once those pairs were identified, Kraft sent both a link. The first one to click on the link and give Kraft her address got five free boxes of Mac&Cheese plus a t-shirt. The campaign took advantage of the real-time  nature  of  Twitter  boosting  the  brand’s  Twitter followers by 400% and at one point gaining  over  300  mentions  of  “Mac&Cheese”  per  minute  on  Twitter.

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6. PRETZEL CRISPS: Launched a$1.00 coupon on their Facebook page. Within 36,000 hours, their fan base grew from 5,000 to 12,000. So, they launched another only coupons– Buy One, Get  One  Free.  Only  this  time  they  didn’t  tell  their  fans.  No  matter,  Fans  found  out  on  their  own and  the  “letting  you  in  on  a  secret”  factor  had  a  viral  effect  that  built  the  fans  following  from  14,000  and  29,000  and  now  it’s  at  over  62,000.  But  fans  just  tell  one  side  of  the  story.   The redemption rate for the fist coupon was 87%; the redemption rate for the second was 95% and annual sales increase was 93%.

7. SARA LEE: Ran a month-long campaign to promote Jimmy Dean D-Lights sandwiches. Users

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were offered a $1 coupon on any one package of Jimmy Dean D-Lights 4 count sandwiches, or, if they chose to share the offer with three or more friends, they could receive a $2.50 coupon. There was also a bonus coupon for $0.50 off on Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowls. The campaign saw over 65,000 visitors in 30 days, and the 64% was through clicksfrom friend referrals. The audience reach was primary in the South-Eastern states and referrals were made to people geographically close to each other. The campaign delivers sales volumes and geo-targeting not possible with traditional coupon methods at a small fraction of their cost.

7. STEAZ: Used social media coupons, blogs and Twitter chats to generate a buzz among moms about their organic teas. The result was 250,000 coupon download at a 20% redemption rate. 6,000 blog and social media mentions. 3,000 new fans and followers. Store shelves that were emptied and sales that doubled from the effort.

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8. TORTILLALAND: Fresh, uncookded tortillas from Circle Foods are different from pre-cooked tortillas that contain preservatives. Once consumers try TortillaLand, they swear by their superior  fresh  taste  and  say  they’ll  never  go  back  to  buying  the  pre-cooked kind again. But the brand has low awareness. TortillaLand created a social sweepstakes where the prize was 3 iPads (1 for you/2 for friends). The objective was to boost the Facebook Fan base of 900 and create a database from entrant to receive additional offers and news of store availability. The sweepstakes boosted the Facebook base 7X in two month. It created 10,000 person database who nowreceive regular emails and show a 50% open rate . The database also serves as brand community for market research and new product ideas with a significant ROI versus traditional methods like focus groups.

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10 . ZAPPOS: Ran a unique sweepstakes with a chance to win a $500 voucher for use at Zappos, but only after entrants visited the online store and put together a list of the items that they would purchase with the winning money. This encouraged 1000ʹ′s to visit the Zappos site with list of their favorite items on Zappos which increased purchases (although Zappos did not release the exact sales increase). We’re  big  believers  in  the  business  effectiveness  of  social  media  promotions.  We  did  the  TortillaLand program for Circle Foods and see it for ourselves. Do these case studies prove the ROI of social media promotions to you?

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9 case studies where social media took out the middleman

Buy it or build it? This is a primary question that involves thought for any business. As it relates to marketing, there’s  no  shortage  of  ways  to  buy  it  from  ads  to  affiliate  relationships  to  list  buying.   But with social media, you build it. And it often comes with a better return on investment because you’re  taking  out  the  middleman  and  building  a  more  direct  relationships  with  your  customers. Want proof? Here are 9 case studies where social media took out the middleman. 1. CLEVELAND CLINIC: Heavily regulated category like healthcare usually shy away from social media but not the Cleveland Clinic. By structuring a cross-functional team to enable education, collaboration, and smart governance, the Cleveland Clinic deepened engagement with its consumers around the globe– both providers and patients. They used Facebook and Twitter for daily wellness tips; LinkedIn for professional recruitment and YouTube for content on diseases and patient stories. Since the Cleveland Clinic established social media as a cross-functional discipline, it has seen a noticeable increase in website traffic, attendance at health lectures and new patients making and keeping appointments.

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2. EDIBLE ARRANGEMENTS. Through their Facebook page, Edible Arrangements offered consumers a voucher for free chocolate dipped strawberries. But to redeem the coupon, fans had to visit an Edible Arrangements store providing Edible Arrangements franchisees the opportunity to promote their store to a slew of new customers. This campaign generated 170,000 new fans and a double-digit increase in sales versus year ago.

3. FOILED CUPCAKES: Has shown extraordinary growth, strong ROI and built a social community where 95% of their customers come from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. When Foiled Cupcakes had their first Groupon promotion, the promotion went live at midnight and fans bought 800 dozens by 8 am. 4. HARLEY DAVIDSON: (HDTalking.com): Harley owners created a website and social community of over 3 million Facebook fans and 62,000 Twitter followers that runs entirely on user-generated content. Here, Harley owners trade photos, jokes, where to find hard to find parts, advice on Harley models and ownership plus there are at least 7 mechanics on-call at all times. HDtalking.com now has 58,000+ Harley owner participating and cost to Harley for operations is negligible. 5. H&R BLOCK: Used Facebook and Twitter during the tax season to provide immediate access to  a  tax  professional  for  Q&A  in  the“Get  It  Right”  social  media  campaign.   The effort secured 1,500,000 unique visitors and answered 1,000,000 questions for a 15% lift in business versus

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the prior year when  there  was  no  social  media  “Get  It  Right”  program.  Here’s  how  Amy  Worley  explains how the company got it right. 6. IBM: Let employees set up internal blogs to promote collaboration and innovation within the company on a global scale. There was no external blog and no pressure on employee to participate in internal blogs but but there were 17,000 internal blogs, 100,000 employees participating regularly and as many as 500,000 participants involved in company crowd-sourcing“jams.”   Crowd-sourcing identified the 10 best incubator businesses, which IBM funded for $100 million and generated $100 billion in total revenue for a 10-to-1 ROI with a 44.1% gross profit margin. 7. MELROSE JEWELERS: An eRetailer sold high end watches like Rolex and Breitling where the average  sales  is  $5,000.  They  offered  consumers  $100  off  on  their  next  purchase  if  they“Like”  them on Facebook. They had an app on their Facebook page that functioned as a simple quiz where,  after  taking  the  quiz  your  “watch  personality”  was  revealed at the end (e.g. you are James Bond 200o Breitling man) to engage and secure email addresses of potential customers. You also got $150 off after your purchase if you took a picture of your new watch and posted it on Facebook. As a result, Facebook fans went from 30,000 to over 180,000 in one quarter and sales went from a few hundred thousand to over $2,000,000. 8. PRETZEL CRISPS: Launched a$1.00 coupon on their Facebook page. Within 36 hours, their fan base grew from 5,000 to 12,000. So, they launched another coupon– Buy One, Get One Free.  Only  this  time  they  didn’t  tell  their  fans.  No  matter.  Fans  found  out  on  their  own  and  the  “letting  you  in  on  a  secret”  factor  had  a  viral  effect  that  built  the  fans  from  14,000  and  29,000  and  now  it’s  at  over  62,000. But fans just tell one side of the story. Theredemption rate for the fist coupon was 87%; the redemption rate for the second was 95% and annual sales increase was 93%.

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8. SETON HALL UNIVERSITY: Was discovering that prospective students went to their Facebook page before their website to find out whether this was the right school for them. So, they engaged on Facebook to increase enrollment and revenue and tagged whether Facebook played a role. Tuitions increased +18% and deposits increased +25% with 2X as many students coming to website from Facebook. 9. TORTILLALAND:Found social media was a great resource for building a database and conducting market research with consumers for their fresh, uncooked tortillas. In the space of a few months, they ran a sweepstakes; then, a free coupon on Facebook that created a database of over 14,000 and insights into target consumers through survey research. They built brand assets that would have cost 100ʹ′s for thousands of dollars through suppliers for a very small fraction of that amount. When  developing  your  brand’s  growth  strategy,  will  you  buy  it  or  build  it  and  take  out  the  middleman?

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Rob Petersen

Rob Petersen is President of BarnRaisers, a ditigal marketing solutions company using social media, the power of community and the proven principles of relationship marketing. Rob was EVP/Chief Strategy Officer for Omnicom and has held leadership positions at FCB, Euro RSCG and Saatchi & Saatchi. Rob has been recognized by the American Marketing Association for building billion dollar businesses multiple times. He has developed game changing consumer relationship platforms that have propelled brands from Abbott, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, MasterCard and Pfizer to market leadership. His accomplishments in business strategy and brand building have led to his thought leadership and expertise in social media. He has developed and executed social media initiatives for the American Heart Association, Colgate, Mars and Shell; all have built online communities with results  and  ROI’s  that  exceeded  expectations. Rob is also a member of the MBA faculty at Rutgers University in Digital Marketing and Social Media Measurements and ROI. He speaks at industry conferences and hold workshops on social media. Rob is a graduate of Colby College in Waterville, Maine.