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Driving Social Media & Customer Acquisition

Throughout the Customer Lifecycle Lee Odden on Jun 29th, 2011    Online Marketing, Social Media

I received an invite to

CrowdFactory’s “Driving Social

Media & Customer Acquisition

Throughout the Customer

Lifecycle” webinar yesterday with

Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter

Group and  Sanjay Dholakia, CEO

of CrowdFactory and decided to 

liveblog it.

Jeremiah has pioneered a lot of

the social media thinking found in progressive companies today and his blog, Web

Strategist, is known to senior business and agency marketing executives world-wide. I’ve

been reading it for many years. This webinar addressed several key issues from a social

engagement and commerce perspective and promised to share how marketers are using

social media to engage customers and prospects across the entire lifecycle.

Customer acquisition isn’t a just a linear path through a sales funnel any more. Social

engagement and sharing opportunities exist wherever content is published, interactions

and brand/consumer communications occur. Realizing how to incorporate social elements

to facilitate engagement and sharing helps brands extend their reach and enlist

customers to advocate for them.

Sanjay opened things up stating that driving engagement is essential throughout the

customer experience, not just at the top of the funnel. Crowd Factory provides software

that facilitates social promotion and engagement of all marketing content.

Jeremiah shared that when marketers come to the table, they often apply social media

efforts in a piecemeal way. It’s important to involve the entire customer lifecycle and to

think about the entire customer journey.

Altimeter asked 140 social strategists: What 3 go to marketing social strategy objectives

will you focus on most in 2011? Responses were led by Website Integration (46.7%),

followed by Ongoing Dialog with Customers (43.4%) and Listening/Learning About

Customers (37.7%)

The Customer Hourglass Framework

The challenge is that companies continue to build tactics in solios. Public Relations,

Branding, Ecommerce and other groups might be building different social experiences for

the same brand. These individual efforts result in an incomplete customer experience.

The traditional purchase funnel is outdated. Think about how we can use that funnel to

be more effective, ala “Flip the Funnel” (Joseph Jaffe). The Customer Hourglass is a model

for this alternative thinking and looks at the entire customer experience: Awareness,

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Source: Altimeter Group

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Consideration, Intent, Purchase, Support, Loyalty, Advocacy. Jeremiah’s presentation

explores each of these brand and customer experiences as it relates to social media.

Awareness: Customers & prospects may not know who you are, so the goal is to become

top of mind. A great example: AmEx OPEN Forum surfaces small business owner

discussions and networking opportunities. This community enables small business owners

to connect with each other and gain insights and expertise from thought leader

contributed content.

Awareness Key Take Aways:

l Expect paid media such as advertising to fuel the Awareness phase

l Often rely on content about lifestyle and pain points of customers

Consideration: It’s about letting customers advocate for you. Leverage your customer’s

content. Example: Epson has included customer reviews. Visitors who interacted with 

reviews were 67% more likely to convert. They also had a 25% higher average order

value. The downside of other people’s content is you lose control.

Consideration Take Aways:

l Repurpose your product inventory information an apply it to the real world

l Aggregate 3rd party reviews to your corporate website

l Repurpose your reviews on your corporate website to 3rd party websites and

blogs: extend and repurpose

Intent: Customer interactions with ecommerce content provides opportunities to share

their intent with relevant networks.  Example: Levi’s incorporates the “Like” button.

Shoppers can “Like” and post comments about produccts straight to their Facebook

wall. Customers see an instant shopping cart based on previous friend’s “Likes”. The

caveat is that the data isn’t always correct, but is improving. Levi’s isn’t sharing

performance numbers but they’re continuing this activity, so something is happening for

them to warrant continued investment.

Intent Takeaways:

l While still emerging, social features are fueling sales efforts by adding richer

context to the customer experience

l Expect next gen apps to re-poullate wish lists and shoppint carts

Purchase - Tapping into friends at POP (point of purchase). This is where to connect with 

customers at the point of decision in the ecommerce experience. An example is Facebook 

launching group buying deals.  Another is Sony using group buying incentives to promote 

an album launch (Britney Spears). If a visitor got 5 friends to pre-order they all get 20%

off.  Sony reports a 50% traffic bump at launch.

Purchase Takeaways:

l Social features allow friends to share point of purchase with others

l WOM (word of mouth) can be measured and attributed to individuals

l Expect in the future that virtual currency or virtual goods will offer consumers

discounts or exclusive deals

Support: Using these technologies to encouragte customers to have a great

experience. Example: Wells Fargo – @askwellsfargo is used to listen to customers and

offer assistance. In the regulated space there are important concerns around privacy, so

conversations are often taken to private chat or channels. Q/A tools, forums and similar 

applications can be used to encourage customers to support each other.

Support Takeaways:

l Reduce support costs by giving information to consumers on hand

l Use a tiered approach” load up FAQ first. Follow up providing the ability for them to

conduct peer to peer support. Provide them with direct to company support when

the first 2 avenues have been exhausted

Loyalty: The social application to this phase extends to multiple areas. Example: Hilton 

develped a mobile application “Top Guests”, which is basically a whitelabel version of

Foursquare for the hospitality industry. HHonors members can give a Facebook friend

25% off Doubletree B&B reservation once they check in.

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RECOGNITION

l Loyalty programs of the past are based on long term commitment and total

potential spending value

l In the future, companies will factor in game mechanics, badging

Advocacy: Another phase that extends to multiple areas, involves enabling customers to

serve as brand ambassadors.  Example: TurboTax Inner Circul uses a community 

management tool.

Another Advocacy example is Microsoft MVP – Most Valuable Professional. Every year 

4,000 MVPs are nominated by peers, employees, and other MVPs then selected by an

internal panel. Term of service is 1 year. It gets customers to do the work of evangelizing

the brand.

Advocacy Takeaway:

l The holy grail of marketing, this is the lowest cost of acquisition, most effective

marketing

Summary: Remember that customers are behaving in new ways, in new places and have

new expectations. Think beyond the silos.

Sanjay asks:  Where do customers spend their time?

There are a number of social applications and tactics social media marketers use to

engage customers online including:

l Sweepstakes

l Special Offers

l Social Shopping

l Viral Video

l Media Boost

l Share Stories

l Wishlists

l Ratings & Reviews

l Badging

Channels used to deploy these applications and tactics include: Website, Facebook, 

Display Ads, Mobile, Landing, Email. These tactics and channels extend across the 

customer lifecycle.

Marketers can create the ability during the ecommerce experience, to engage with social

network friends (Facebook) for opinions. An example is the Rachel Ray website where

customers can tap into their Facebook network during the purchase experience for

advice.

Tips on engaging customers throughout the lifecycle:

l Fuel the top of the funnel (awareness) with paid media

l Identify intent through social action

l Offer the option to share your purchase event on the ecommerce thank you page –

give them an incentive

l When customers rate your content, encourage them to share that activity with

their social networks

l Drive loyalty with earned prizes and status

l Call to arms – encourage fans to come together to reach a particular goal – game,

recognition

l Drive advocacy through story telling – encourage customers to tell & share their

stories

Social data across the lifecycle is critical to success. Think about social as an “Add-in” or

extension to what you are already doing at each stage – not a separate thing. (I would

recommend SEO and Social Media Optimization in the same way).

Use the right social engagement for the right touch point – all from a single place so you

have a common set of data about your customers. Use analytics and real-time feedback

to determine what works and what doesn’t.

Related Posts You May Enjoy Reading:

l Marketing Content During the Customer Life Cycle

l Social Media for SEO vs. Customer Engagement

l Customer & Influencer Research in Social Media

l 5 Social Media Tips for Ecommerce Marketing

l How Social Media & Email Marketing Boost Customer Reach

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