Does 'Liking' a Brand Drive User Loyalty?

When it comes to Facebook "likes," social network users are sending brand marketers mixed signals. An eVoc Insights study indicates 59% of Facebook users have "liked" a Facebook brand or company page in the past six months.

Although this statistic may seem promising for brands, how "liking" a brand connects with consumer loyalty is still vague.

When surveyed by eVoc, 54% of users who "liked" a brand or company page on Facebook that sells a product or service said they were somewhat or much more likely to purchase from that brand. The study confirms that the most "liked" pages are for food brands, TV shows, music, movies and clothing.

Although the eVoc Insight statistic suggests more than half of consumers are agreeable toward purchasing from the brands on Facebook, consumer behavior suggests otherwise. According to a study from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, an Australia-based marketing think tank, just 1% of fans of the biggest brands on Facebook engage with the brands on the site.

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute study looked at Facebook metrics for the top 200 brands, and through an examination of activities such as "likes," comments, posts and shares, the research group found nothing substantial to link a brand's Facebook presence with loyalty.

Limited consumer engagement with brands on Facebook suggests there may be a disconnect between the reasons why consumers actually "like" a brand and the reasons brands think consumers are "liking" their page. When the CMO Council asked Facebook users in Q4 2011 about their expectations after "liking" a brand on Facebook, the top expectation (67%) was to be "eligible for exclusive offers."

However, when the CMO Council asked marketers what they thought it meant when a consumer "liked" their brand page, a quarter of marketer respondents answered, "because they are loyal customers."

The link between "likes" and loyalty remains unclear. Although consumers respond favorably about their likelihood to purchase from a brand they follow on Facebook, that's not overly evident on their Facebook timelines.

Marketers should keep in mind that for consumers, Facebook remains primarily a place to interact with peers and share experiences. Although many consumers have opened up to brands that are present on Facebook, brand marketers should not expect loyalty each time a consumer clicks the "like" button.

(Source: eMarketer, 02/08/12)

Take Advantage Of Gen Y's Willingness To Talk

Most brands aren't taking advantage of the opportunities presented them to engage Gen Y consumers. 

Gen Y is on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and the majority of social networks, and they expect to have a conversation with your brand on these channels.

Most of the time, brands see this interaction in a negative sense because consumers bring complaints to a Facebook wall or Twitter feed. Gen Y consumers are incited to engage with brands based on a negative experience, not a positive one so brands become reactive and can't engage in a positive fashion.

According to a recent MTV Networks study, 70% of Gen Y consumers said they'd figure out how to make things fair if they feel a company is being unfair with them. The network found that the group as a whole demands fairness, transparency and clear, consistent rules from brands. This often means brands get bombarded with negative Facebook posts or tweets when it increases shipping charges or makes a decision a majority of its consumers doesn't like.

The solution is simple: Brands need to be more proactive in engaging Gen Y consumers. It doesn't have to be formal research done with an agency or even scientifically formulated -- just engage like a regular person. It's the first step in trying to bring Gen Y consumers into your circle.

If you're thinking of changing shipping charges on your website or altering your return policy, talk to consumers first. Giving Gen Y costumers a chance to provide feedback on a possible change and then seeing their suggestions come to life -- or at least the chance for their feedback to be seriously considered -- is the best way to start creating grassroots ambassadors in this consumer group.

This type of consumer research doesn't have to just be for research; it can be used for marketing. Engaging Gen Y consumers in a positive fashion should be central to any brand's social media strategy. It could be as simple as a Facebook question on an airline's brand page, asking consumers what type of entertainment they'd like to see on the plane.

Rather than waiting for a disgruntled passenger who was angry about missing expected reruns of “30 Rock,” the airline can give consumers a chance to help shape that programming. If a problem does come up, you have a group of consumers who can back you up because they participated in the conversation your brand started on in-flight entertainment.

Use the tools in front of you to start a positive conversation with consumers and take advantage of Gen Y's willingness to talk. 

Patrick Evans - STA Travel

Top Restaurant Marketing Trends for 2012

Marketing Agency Predicts Ways to Tap 'Influencers' to Drive Traffic

With the battle for market share expected to get even tougher next year, restaurant operators will have to be smarter in how they target "influencers" -- people others turn to for restaurant advice -- to drive traffic.

So says Carin Galletta Oliver, president of the San Francisco-based world-of-mouth marketing agency Ink Foundry, who predicts six restaurant marketing trends for 2012 -- plus one trend she contends restaurant operators should rethink in the new year. Ink Foundry has worked with restaurant brands such as Bonefish Grill, Fogo de Chao, California Pizza Kitchen, Rubio's Fresh Mexican Grill and Carl's Jr.

Consumers are growing ever more selective about restaurant choices as they cut back on dining out occasions, Oliver said.

"They're going to want to feel they're making a safe choice," she said. "And that puts more pressure on restaurant operators to make a connection."

Oliver predicts five key tactics restaurant operators will use next year:

Data. The number of tools that allow restaurant operators to collect information about social media, public relations, e-mail marketing and advertising is growing. Savvy restaurant operators are also collecting data on their customers in various ways.

The key, however, will be how well restaurant operators integrate that data and develop a more holistic analysis across all platforms.

Most restaurants keep data in separate silos, Oliver said, thinking of marketing, public relations and influencer relations as separate departments.

"You need to break down those walls," she said, and merge that information to more effectively mine insights.

Identifying and activating influencers. Restaurant operators tend to define their customers in demographic terms, but today's restaurant influencer is likely to defy or transcend more traditional demographic characteristics, like income level, gender or age.

A powerful restaurant influencer today, for example, might be a young woman who traveled through Europe, living in bargain-rate hotels so she could spend more money on high-end restaurants.

"If you looked at her on paper, she probably wouldn't be on your list" based on demographics, said Oliver. "But if you listen to her conversations, you'd realize she's in your restaurant five times a month and spends more money" than the average diner.

Those are the people who are driving restaurant recommendations these days, Oliver said, and restaurants next year will be developing tools to encourage those people to spread the word about their brands.

"We need to identify those folks and create programs for them so they can more easily pass along information to friends and family," Oliver said.

Some restaurants, for example, have used gift certificates given to specific influencers to share with friends and family members. "That's like a third-party endorsement from someone they really trust," Oliver said.

And as gift certificates become more available in digital form, restaurants can track how they're used, who is sharing them and their impact.

Signature items. Most restaurants have a signature item or two that stands out, but Oliver sees the role of the signature dish becoming increasingly important.

Having a great signature dish is one way to offer influencers a "wow experience," Oliver said. "It gives them something to tell their friends about."

It also gives people something to search, she said.

Consumers tend not to search online for generic terms like "steak restaurant." Instead, they'll look for where they can find a great macaroni and cheese dish or taco.

Oliver noted the Bonefish Grill chain, which is known for its Bang Bang Shrimp appetizer, an item that creates positive chatter on Yelp.

"It's extremely challenging to sway diners from one restaurant to another, but a great signature item has the power to do it," she said.

Loyalty programs look to gaming. Loyalty programs are effective tools for driving traffic, but next year Oliver predicts more restaurant operators will be integrating aspects of social gaming -- offering rewards for certain actions, like referring friends or multiple visits.

Rather than offering guests nebulous titles, like the mayors of Foursquare, Oliver said restaurants will offer more tangible offline incentives for participation in loyalty games.

One-to-one accessibility. Restaurant chefs used to stay closed in their kitchens, but the age of social media has allowed those who cook to engage with those who eat in ways that were formerly impossible.

In 2012, however, Oliver predicts that customers will be demanding even more direct interaction with chefs, both on and offline -- and not through an intermediary on the marketing team.

Expect to see personal messages directly from the chef to his or her best customers informing them of menu changes, nightly specials and suggestions based on past orders, Oliver said.

"As chefs get more comfortable with being in the limelight and with using technology, we'll see even more engagement," she said.

Coupon personalization. In 2011, many restaurants experimented with social coupon sites, such as Groupon or LivingSocial, with both positive and negative results, Oliver said.

Next year, Oliver predicts restaurants will continue to experiment with social couponing, but they will do so with more realistic expectations. They will also look for ways to have more control, to customize the offers and to ask for more data on results.

Oliver said more restaurants will use their customer lists to promote such social coupons, focusing on top influencers to provide a value-added experience and reward pass-along recommendations.

More generalized coupon seekers "tend to just come for the coupon and never come back," Oliver said. "And you can't upsell them."

Search local. Allocating resources to enhancing local search engine efforts is not likely to drive traffic, Oliver said.

Surveys by Ink Foundry have found that consumers tend not to select where they dine out based on online search engine results, she said.

Word of mouth is far more effective, Oliver said. Once consumers have a recommendation from an influential friend or family member then they turn to sites like Urbanspoon or Yelp to look up information.

Restaurants may be better off spending marketing dollars on identifying and courting those influential guests, rather than pouring dollars into local search enhancements.

"You want a well-rounded approach," Oliver said. "Remember, most influence happens offline."

(Source: Nation's Restaurant News, 12/19/11)

Look for Hefty Holiday Spending on Local TV

Retailers are booking lots of TV ad time to lure shoppers.
The outlook for consumer holiday spending isn't particularly strong this year, with forecasters predicting growth of 2.5 to 3 percent over 2010, about half last year's growth rate.

But spot television spending should be very healthy despite that lukewarm forecast, ending a string of months of flat or declining spending following a softer-than-expected spring.

The reason is simple.

Shoppers still feeling the pinch of a down economy are looking for the lowest prices, and retailers are competing fiercely to reel them in with gimmicks like midnight openings on Black Friday.

They're willing to use any means to get consumers into the stores.

"Fourth quarter rates are up, and we're anticipating sell-out conditions in some markets," one East Coast media buyer says.

That will be a big change from recent months in spot TV. During the first half of the year spot spending fell 1.2 percent, according to Kantar Media data analyzed by the TVB.

Spending took a hit during second quarter when Japanese auto companies largely suspended advertising in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that hit their country, leading to production and supply problems.

That led other automakers to pull back as well because they had less competition. The lack of auto advertising meant an excess of inventory of some markets, where pricing flatlined or dipped.

But things are looking better for fourth quarter, especially the final six weeks of the year.

Many retailers, including department and discount stores, have already been advertising their holiday sales for weeks. Pre-holiday sales have also been more popular this year, prompting more spending to advertise these new offers.

Clothing retailers have been particularly active, note buyers, and electronics should be growing as well as retailers battle to offer better prices on holiday must-haves like tablets, smartphones and TVs.

Also helping the fourth-quarter spot outlook is a small influx of political spending ahead of the surge of campaign ads in the first quarter.

Only a handful of states with early primaries will benefit from this spending, but they are important states that will set the tone for the later primary season, including Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida.

In first quarter, when many states will see the start of the lowest unit rate political window, political should pick up for the post-holiday decline in retail spending and keep spot TV spending on the rise.

ZenithOptimedia predicts that spot TV spending will be up 8 percent next year, to $22.6 billion.

Toni Fitzgerald - Media Life

Bringing 20/20 Foresight to Marketing

With the explosion of social networks, mobile devices, and micro sites, marketing executives are challenged to gain a truly integrated view of customer behavior across the range of established and emerging channels.

A report from Coremetrics, Bringing 20/20 Foresight to Marketing, is based on an exclusive survey of more than 300 marketing and senior-level executives at large companies ($250M-plus in revenues) in the U.S. and the U.K. Survey respondents were asked about their efforts to meet business goals using online marketing software to manage their programs. The findings provide a glimpse into a fast-paced future fueled by robust and far-reaching analytics data used to manage and enhance the customer experience.

In addition, the study reveals how top performers -- those businesses that rate their marketing technology investment as a world-class differentiator -- take a more proactive and agile approach to marketing. For example, these world-class marketers are three times as likely to track their campaign performance in real time, and more than four times as likely to adjust their campaigns in real time.

KEY FINDINGS

• Marketers' priorities are customer-centric. More than half (52%) cited customer retention as their top current priority, followed by customer acquisition (38%), and customer profitability (29%). These will remain top priorities a year from now.
• Marketing budgets mirror these priorities. About four in ten executives (39%) are dedicating the largest chunk of their funds to customer retention; customer acquisition runs a close second (36%).
• Online tactics will see significant lifts in budgets. Over the next year, 56% will increase their online marketing spend, 54% will increase their social media spend, and 50% will increase their mobile marketing spend.
• Greater emphasis is being placed on data-based decisions. Nearly half of respondents are increasing their spending on business intelligence, and 78% say there is greater scrutiny placed on what works and what doesn't than there was a year ago.
• Marketers are challenged to understand the influence of their campaigns beyond the basic metrics of acquisition and conversion. Top performers are using technology to get at these results and optimize their channels.
• Marketers are not always clear on what tools they need to meet their top challenges. Respondents admit being concerned about their ability to get a deeper understanding of customer interactions or obtain an integrated view of customer behavior. But there appears to be a disconnect in how they solve that issue, as the tools that could help-reconciling multiple online marketing applications and lack on an integrated marketing suite-are at the bottom of their list of concerns.
• Marketing is moving at light speed, but most marketers are not watching or adjusting their campaigns accordingly. Just 9% review their online marketing performance in real time, and only 9% adjust their campaigns in real time.
• Top performers are more proactive in tracking and adjusting their campaigns. Among companies that said their investment in marketing technology was "world class," 27% track their performance in real time, and39% adjust their campaign performance in real time.
• While nearly two thirds of respondents said they segment and target customers based on an integrated view of customer behavior, that view is not necessarily complete. Just 30% have a view of mobile behavior, and just 34% look at social media behavior.

(Source: Forbes, May, 2011)

Signature Touchpoints Can Break Through Clutter

Breakthrough. All marketers strive to make their offerings stand out, be noticed and gain traction. Few achieve their goals -- categories are competitive, media is cluttered, budgets are limited and customers are moving too fast to notice.
 
In pursuit of breakthrough, many marketers repeat worn-out methods or fall prey to the latest digital fad. Many believe breakthrough can only be achieved through big advertising budgets or put blind faith in the power of innovation to sell itself.

A savvy few, however, have put their efforts into signature touchpoints -- with resounding success. Creating them helped Electrolux vault from a miniscule market share to owning a third of the North American premium kitchen appliance market in less than a year and despite the recession.

It was important for Electrolux to reconfigure European products for the U.S., and fashion a compelling message. But what made the difference was finding new ways to engage customers in the showroom, on the web and among kitchen designers, all critical to kitchen remodelers. In creating signature touchpoints around those interaction points, Electrolux's team created traveling designer showcases featuring spokeswoman Kelly Ripa, redesigned the in-store environment, and built a highly engaging web experience.

Signature touchpoints are a bundle of related points of customer interaction that have been redesigned to improve the customer experience and foster a unique, proprietary customer connection. They engage, motivate and, importantly, provide a platform for products and services to bypass customer filters and competitive noise to breakthrough.

Imagine 3M without its successful top-to-top executive relationships with the leaders at its customers' customers. Would Apple be as successful without the Apple store to entice customers to play with its products? Where would IBM be had it not turned consulting touchpoints into a competitive advantage?

Transforming important aspects of the customer experience into signature touchpoints takes just as much rigor and inspiration as new product development or building a communication campaign. Creating them relies on insights into how customers gather and filter buying information and requires innovative approaches to engaging customers along their path to purchase.
Here are the steps to build signature touchpoints:

1. Map the path to purchase:
The path to purchase varies based on category and the purchase occasion. A routine copy paper purchase follows a fast, price-driven path. It takes a far more considered path to source a high-tech material for a novel manufacturing application.

Successfully mapping the path takes understanding the role of influencers, barriers blocking a customer's movement along the path, and the places on the path that are critical to customers' decision making. Hill's Pet Nutrition, for example, a global leader in premium nutritional foods for dogs and cats, has created an array of signature touchpoints with veterinarians. These include the nutrition education that the company provides at no cost to veterinarians. It lets them fulfill their post-graduate learning requirements while building their understanding of emerging pet nutrition issues such as obesity or joint disease.

2. Develop innovative connection ideas
It takes a systematic and inspired innovation process to develop signature touchpoints, focusing on ways to transform, replace, enhance or extend existing interaction points. Co-creation is one effective way to create innovative signature touchpoints by engaging cross-functional teams to re-examine customer decision-making and generate customer connection ideas. Zurich's HelpPoint resulted from co-creation. This innovative signature touchpoint simplifies information gathering for customers evaluating insurance. The one-stop resource meets all their insurance planning needs, helping them at steps in their path to purchase when they are most confused.

3. Build integrated plans
Finally, signature touchpoints need to be integrated with products and messaging so they become a platform for products that break through the clutter and bypass customer filters. Integrated plans must be concrete, well sequenced, and include concrete progress measures. Integrated planning always appears simple on paper but drafting plans that are inspired and actionable is difficult.

Three simple practices can help. First, keep it short. Concise plans force the organization to concentrate on doing a few things well, they key to effective execution. Second, build a balanced scorecard early in the planning process that includes metrics of product satisfaction, message penetration, and customer connection. When metrics are decided early in the plan, they help ensure that the entire team is aligned on achieving results not just on activities. Third, focus on customer behavior. For every investment, ask two questions: What do we want customers to do? How will this investment help them do it?

Signature touchpoints are not new. Macy's in its heyday created the Thanksgiving Day Parade to kick off the Christmas buying season. Hallmark supported elevating Mother's Day into a card-giving occasion.

What is new is a proven approach to building them. Consider signature touchpoints the third dimension of marketing -- the crucial, and often overlooked, component in achieving breakthrough in the escalating battle for customer engagement.

by Fred Geyer and Chiaki Nishino - Marketing Daily 07/11/11

Marketing to Baby Boomers...It's Maslow, Stupid

Great article by Jim Gilmart of Coming of Age, Inc...

In April 2010, I wrote "Writing a Brand New Book" for this newsletter and cautioned readers to be careful about using euphemisms like "elder," "of a certain age" or "senior." Many may become more than a little upset with being labeled. After all, they aren't simply writing a new chapter of their lives, they're writing a brand new book -- and each book is different. They are diversifying more as they grow older. That diversification, plus the segmentation of 21st Century advertising, is making them much tougher to reach through advertising.

Age and experience will bring the Boomers a greater appreciation for the finer definition that nuance and subtlety give to a matter. As they move from the crowd thinking of their youth to personal uniqueness in their older years, marketers should offer those messages that generally reflect a conditional tone allowing each reader/viewer to interpret the message based upon their needs and desires. Advertisers should be careful about labeling the aging boomers at all. This huge mass of people defies pigeonholing or categorizing beyond their age bracket. They have vastly different needs and wants in food, clothing, health services, travel and entertainment. All this will frustrate advertisers' normal "desire to put every consumer in some category that allows marketers to predict their behavior."

Our colleague, David Wolfe, is a strong proponent of Abraham Maslow's famous "Hierarchy of Needs." To recall, they are:

• Self-actualization

• Self-esteem and esteem of others' needs

• Love and belonging needs

• Basic safety and security needs

• Basic physiological needs

Maslow said that a person must experience "substantial gratification" at one level before advancing to a higher level. For example, the newborn infant's basic needs are first and foremost "basic psychological needs." As the infant grows and develops, needs of a higher order begin to emerge.

Maslow called the highest order of basic human needs "self-actualization." The term stands for a person's basic need to reach his or her fullest potential. Most of us may experience the processes of self-actualization in varying degrees but do so while lower-level needs remain the dominant focus of our attentions. The fact that most marketing messages either project values associated with lower-level needs or fail to reflect the transcendent values of self-actualization suggests that relatively few marketers have a Maslow 101 level of understanding of the older people to whom they direct their marketing messages.

In July 2008, David Armano wrote in Advertising Age, "The problem with marketing is that it often doesn't allow marketers to go deep, to gain an intimate understanding of human behavior. We're strapped for time, spread thin and torn between making our clients or bosses happy while trying to do what we think is right. We may have access to the latest trend reports, market segments, personas and metrics. We may be surrounded by smart, capable people who know what they are doing. But there's a question we need to ask ourselves. Are we making the time to walk in the shoes of the people we market to? Are we willing to swim in the deep end?"

If your target is Baby Boomers and you're spending most of your switching from iPhone to text to chat, you'll need to understand first hand that not everyone lives like this, even though you might be. It stands beyond any need to defend the proposition that marketing success rises or falls according to the marketer's understanding of the customer's worldview, values and aspirations. However, this basic need of marketing cannot be satisfied by asking customers about such issues. Few people know themselves well enough to give a marketer the answer he or she wants. You likely need to step outside of your own behavioral patterns.

The understanding of the older psyche that every marketer working in older markets wants is rooted in empirical research. While Maslow actually did little empirical research, he was gifted with an awesome level of intuitive insight about human behavior; others have investigated many of his insights in empirical studies.

Jim Gilmartin Tuesday, July 5, 2011