While the goal of marketing is to improve customer’s overall interactions with a brand, few organizations engage directly with their customer tribes or communities and therefore miss out on leveraging what is one of its most valuable assets.

Companies also have a hard time keeping up with the latest technology or vehicle for sharing information, rarely considering the types of networks and technologies people use to access the company’s information. Probably the best example is the slow adoption by companies to optimize websites for the increasing number of mobile users. As Jacob Nielsen’s research shows, most don’t have much information or capabilities to support users (or even bother supporting users) who access sites via a smart phone. The current success rate of completing a task for mobile web use is about 64%, the same as Nielsen research measured for desktop web use in 1999. Note: the current desktop success rate is 84%.

Increasingly, customer engagement starts with the mobile device. Most people begin their online journey to learn about a company through Facebook, a company website or Google search. Companies need to rethink how to develop and manage their digital experiences. Even the most successful communities will need to be better designed for mobile and smart phones.

Talk to Your Customers

To truly create a better customer experience, not only do you have to talk directly to a customer in person, but you also need to understand the tasks they want to accomplish with your products and services. In the case of mobile devices, there’s only a small amount of real estate on a mobile device that a company can use to show off their functionality, so mobile engagement will have to focus on highlighting the critical few items people might want to know in order to take the next step to learn about your product or service.

Fortunately, it is easier to learn about people’s interests and needs and to understand their perspective than ever before. Even if you are hesitant to talk to a customer directly, you can always email them, send them a direct message on Twitter or LinkedIn, or participate in their niche communities or personal interest groups, such as Fiskateers.com, which is designed for people interested in scrap booking and other handcrafts.

Learning to Engage

It is the responsibility however, of every employee, from senior management to the front-line worker, to interact directly with customers. And today the job of most marketers is to shepherd this process along by:

1. Providing guidelines and guardrails to employees via opt-in training programs.
2. Setting up a feedback mechanism where employees can ask questions.
3. Understanding their customers tribes — who they spend time with, where they spend time, how they like to learn and how they use technology.
4. Understanding the group dynamics of these tribes — who are the leaders, the relevant influencers.
5. Partnering with tribal leaders and the not so powerful to learn about how they use your products, services, etc.
6. Developing customer engagement maps to highlight all the customer (and business partner) touch points involved when interacting with your product or your various channels.

Customer engagement needs to be part of every company’s DNA and culture! Customer interaction must be supported by and rewarded by senior management. They need to ensure that the proper mechanisms and processes needed to successfully interact with users are in place and can be modified if necessary to integrate those lessons back into the organization.

Customers = Staff?

In fact, I would recommend going one step further and integrating some of your customers into your company teams. At Intuit, for example, a few customers sat in on our staff meetings. This allowed them to better understand some of the development challenges we faced in delivering (on) all of their requests.

In 2012, engagement with customers can improve by integrating them into the different areas of your company. Consider some of these ideas:

1. Invite customers into your product development process, such as the British Telecommunication site and Giffgaff, where product ideas are tested initially in Giffgaff labs and made available to all members for a short period. If they are popular, they may be incorporated into the main product (and are withdrawn if not). The labs’ products are also beta tested by selected community members before release.
2. Incorporate them into your customer service activities — Intuit’s Small Business Community has 70% of the questions answered by users and their overall resolution rate is higher than the support website.
3. Bring them into your marketing efforts — when targeting your tribes, wouldn’t it be nice to have some help figuring out how to phrase a sentence or describe a product, or list out a how-to by someone who is actually using your product.
4. Be sure to bring them into your partner programs. Constant Contact, traditionally an email provider, has built an effective partner program consisting of all the parties needed to assist a small business’s marketing organization, such as copywriter, designers, etc. Each company provides valuable feedback on how Constant Contact can improve their training program

Perhaps most importantly, customer engagement should be embedded into a company’s products and services. General Motors’ OnStar could be a good example. Today, it mainly provides crash, roadside and emergency assistance. But imagine if GM reached out to drivers and obtained real-time feedback while they were driving via an opt-in ongoing survey with some sort of automatic diagnostic system that was part of the car. Why wait until there is an actual problem or crisis to leverage the OnStar system? Imagine, too, if OnStar leveraged its GPS system and provided information on special sales, such as Groupon or event sites, such as EventBrite.

Customer engagement does not have to take place on your company’s own branded website or via your own infrastructure. Companies can easily identify its relevant promoters — ambassadors of a sort — on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks and have these individuals answer product or services related questions. And you don’t have to pay these ambassadors. Instead, you can help support their own businesses – tools, software and consulting – be successful.

As highlighted above, customer engagement can happen on different platforms, different social networks and among different groups of people in a company. It should be looked at as a journey that is always measured and improved upon. Some companies use NetPromoter Scores to measure their success in this area. Forrester Research scores engagement based on the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence an individual has with a brand over time. The goal, in addition to scoring engagement, should be to listen carefully to what users are saying and how they are saying it. At the end of the day, walking in their shoes and listening carefully to their words will be more valuable then any single score or rating.

(This first appeared at http://www.cmswire.com/)

Social media tools webinar 1 11 12

And if you have the time, you can listen to a recording of the webinar here.

If you are looking to get ahead of your competition, think “Big Data.” It is one of the top issues that keeps the C-suite awake at night. And guess what. The data is just going to continue to grow and grow.

Recently, a McKinsey research study showed that it was one of the top priorities for CIOs and another study by Corporate Executive Board highlighted it as one of the key issues that CMOs face today.

Historically, these two groups rarely agreed on the biggest challenge(s) facing their organization. With the advent of social media and mobile mania, however, times are changing. Both CMOs and CIOs are now trying to figure out what just hit them; Few executives are prepared for this deluge of data. And few companies have the tools or the skilled workers to handle it.

Even though marketers are becoming more technical, they are still feeling challenged to decipher what the data is telling them. With all the talk of ROI, it is amazing how many CMOs still don’t understand the economics of their business. Unless they can figure this out, they will loose out to their competitors.

Managing this big elephant can be a strategic advantage for companies. Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn recently highlighted this in Fast Company.

As the activity in this space gets denser, it becomes important for [deals companies] to maintain their value proposition, both for the merchant and the consumer, and to be able to match the right two.

The ability to do that kind of matching, off the data, is the kind of thing that has a robust, at-scale, defensible value proposition and makes it harder for other people to offer products that are as good.

Reid, who is now also a venture capitalist recently said that each company in his portfolio will be asked to have a Big Data strategy. So, who will be drive this in a company? Marketers? IT folks? Marketers should get a head start and begin driving this — just like they often find themselves driving social media policies and training. I am not saying the social, mobile and big data are the same thing, but rather, Big Data offers another opportunity for marketers to play a leadership role in defining the vision and the requirements. And then partner with IT to ensure the right infrastructure in place.

Big Data is important because it enables marketers to slice the onion even thinner and develop more detailed customer segment information. In fact, some people are referring to this as ‘Digital Characteristics.’ Even more important, customer information can be refined and updated real time, leading to more customized promotions. Imagine tracking a mobile phone users behavior real time and adjusting your promotions accordingly. Or better yet, up-selling or cross-selling on their recent behavior.

So, I recommend following steps to take Big Data the basket:

1. Make it part of your DNA; be clear (and communicate to the organization) why you are embracing big data – that it is not only a trendy phrase, but also a way of being;
2. Create the mindset that this will be a journey where you will have to be flexible and not have your KPIs set in stone and that you will tweak them and refine them overtime (This is the way of being!)
3. Hire a data scientist and a business analyst who have experience in handling large data sets
4. Train each employee to think about data — (Note: But don’t only think about quantitative information because the qualitative data is just as important)
5. Be open to a cross-functional approach (Hey marketers, you can lead this charge) to leveraging large amounts of information.
6. Know that data will grow exponentially, so be prepared to build the infrastructure and to build an infrastructure that can (continue) to scale over time
7. Meet several times a week to discuss the changing nature of your data and your business (meeting once a week is not enough)
8. Understand that big data sets could kill the concept of sampling

And last, but not least, CMOs should think of CIOs as their ally when venturing on the Big Data journey. Together, they should work to understand and leverage the large data sets and extensive learnings coming from their customers behavior online. This information will provide insights that will lead to more innovation, better products and more sales.

How are you thinking about Big Data?

Hyper Social Recruiting

Is Online Video a Legal Danger for you Businessby Grant Crowell , Thursday, March 31, 2011Online video continues to boom, with an explosion of content, technologies, communities and campaign spending. But what hasn’t been discussed is the increase in legal problems for businesses with online video — and the fact that most marketers today still have no idea what the legal issues with online video are.Lack of knowledge of these legal issues is presenting more serious consequences for businesses. These can range from the removal of their videos from sharing sites and web hosts and cancellation of their accounts, to the more serious consequences of civil lawsuits with heavy fines, and even potential criminal charges. All of these can cause real damage to ROI, serious businesses losses, and a negative effect on one’s brand and professional reputation.How did we get to this point? First you might be inclined to think back to the last decade of the 20^th century, when the Web was considered to be the Wild West of marketing — a label connotating tolerance of some degree of lawlessness, Our legal issues then were largely around intellectual property and stealing other’s content — including copyright and trademark infringement. In the first decade of the 21^st century, the birth and growth of social media and online video brought about new legal concerns such as privacy rights.As we have progress into the second decade of the 21^st century, improved interactive technologies and increased rewards for producing and marketing video content and campaigns – be it blanketing Google’s search results with video listings, or achieving a viral video success – have driven us further into real-time marketing, with less time for thinking things through properly. It has turned more businesses and entrepreneurs into instinctive marketers than restrained, thoughtful ones. They grow accustomed to taking whatever content they can find without real concern of ownership, publishing it immediately without real concern for accuracy, and pushing social limits to get views on the cheap. Basically, they paying little or no attention to the fact that a virtual creation of a video may cause real problems to real people.What is it about the medium of video that is triggering such a legal reaction – not just in civil courts, but also now with real criminal prosecutions? I’ve seen the causes to be manifold:·

• Responsiveness - Marketers know that people typically have a more visceral response to video than other single media, online or offline. The problem for businesses is that producing a video to elicit a strong reaction with an intended positive outcome for your business, also can risk producing an equally strong negative reaction. (Sometimes businesses even intend to generate a strong negative reaction, thinking that it will generate more publicity they can harness.) So when audiences and authorities online see a video that ends up generating a negative reaction, they could be more likely to experience feelings of outrage, and act on it through lawsuits and even criminal prosecutions.·
• Virility - Online video has its own extremely large communities on YouTube, Facebook and most any social network that are built around sharing content with others. Add to the fact that video naturally lends itself to sharing, and you can realize how a negative reaction by a few individuals over a video can compound into a negative reaction by many people very quickly.·
• Ignorance - Most people are still not aware of YouTube’s, Facebook’s, and other social media sites’ terms of service, community guidelines, and copyright and trademark guidelines.·
• Disinterest - Many video users aren’t inclined to act responsibly and give proper attention to any guidelines, seeing them as getting in the way of their marketing and fun.·
• Confusion - With online video and most other social media, much of the law is evolving in the courts, making it extremely difficult sometimes for even attorneys to feel secure about what’s permissible to do and what isn’t.·
• Ubiquity - Immersed in an online world where being the fastest and most outrageous is both rewarded and commonplace, businesspeople’s perceptions of what’s legally permissible can get skewed.It’s time for marketers and all professionals involved in the online video industry to get a basic legal video education. We need to start paying more attention to legal rights and responsibilities for this most powerful media, getting permission before publishing, and consulting with attorneys specializing in intellectual property, Internet law, and entertainment law who have a good grasp on the online video landscape. To not exercise this basic responsibility for how we choose to use online video in our business would bring us down — from a positive YouTube culture to a negative “You Sued” culture.Originally posted on MediaPost.com

Symantec and the Ponemon Institute just release a report on the cost of data breach. It showed the cost of a data breach continues to increase each year and is now at an average $7.2 million per incident, up 7 percent from 2009. That’s $214 for every compromised customer record breached. Part of this increase was caused by the number of criminal acts, but there are other factors involved too. These include: detection, forensics (now, I think this would be a great profession — CSI in the Cloud — and upfront work. Most companies don’t put enough energy in the ‘pre-ememptive stage.’ While IT might all over this, it’s important to work with employees so they can understand the risks. It’s important to incorporate protecting companies data into the company’s DNA. And I am not talking about a 1 time training session each year. This is especially true as companies open up their sites to social networks’ authentication systems! While many people believe the costs and data issues will decrease over time, I have a different perspective. Our world is getting cloudier — and the more we do away from our own box (laptops, PCs, etc.) the more protecting customer data and company information will become an issue.

While working with the Adobe Enterprise Team, I was introduced to Jacob Morgan, who consults to a number of companies (and has a good blog) about CRM.He recently wrote about a book called “The New Supply Chain Agenda,” by Reuben E. Slone, J. Paul Dittmann, and John T. Mentzer, and how it provides a ‘risk’ model that could also be used for evaluating ‘risk’ for a social business, produce or venture.The framework, which is highlighted in the book, is outlined below.Again, the key is that it is all about doing the work upfront, planning for a potential crisis, and evaluating your strengths and weaknesses. It’s a simply model, but it does add some structure to an often unstructured or forgotten practice. Financial and Insurance Risk Managers run models and build frameworks all the time. It’s just the other folks in the organization, who forget to plan.The first steps are to look at:

• Severity
• Probability of Occurrence
• Probability of early detection

And then you score your ‘RISK’ with a simple probability index. One key point is that this is not done by a single group. It requires a cross-functional teamwork. At one of my clients, we built a ‘Center of Excellence’ to quarterback this process. Some companies have the Social Media Team do this. My only caution here is that this could put more of a marketing lens on things vs. looking at each area of the company: Finance, Legal, Privacy, Product Development, etc.The last two steps involve creating Recommended Actions and Responsibility.Recommended Actions are good, but I would probably make it stronger by saying “Action Plan.” I hate leaving things open for interpretation. Obviously during the crisis itself, the ‘owner’ has the flexibility to change the action plan a bit. Having an owner, someone who is ultimately responsible is important. And having a back up owner is important too.In the chart above, it lists different departments responsible for implementing an action plan. I prefer to assign the name of someone and their back up. Ownership is the key in preparing for and implementing ‘Risk Management.’One model for the ownership part is the DACI framework, where there is:

• 1 Driver (D)
• 1 Approver (A)
• Multiple consultants, who help provide in put into the planning (C)
• Multiple Informed people, who just need to know what is going on in case they are called upon and need to get up to speed quickly (I)

I will discuss the DACI model in more detail in a future post…