IMPLEMENTING A GLOBAL SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM AT SCALE

Transcription

1 IMPLEMENTING A GLOBAL SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM AT SCALE Gauge the difference in social maturity across regions and brands Answer the So What question with your previous programs: analyze what worked and what didn t Choose the optimal organization methodology: centralized vs. localized Speak the CEO/CMO language: build business-driven KPIs Agree on a reporting structure for all use cases Define an action path for escalation: connect and scale Build a predictive analytics program to optimize campaigns and boost ROI

2 1. GAUGE THE DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL MATURITY ACROSS REGIONS AND BRANDS When tackling social media monitoring, all brands face similar challenges. Synthesio s Social Media Maturity Model, presented below, is a summary of the steps many brands must go through to become social media champions. If your brand is in the process of conceiving or launching a global (or multi-region) project, it is important to take into account the varying levels of maturity across different geographies, as that will influence the approach to achieving social intelligence in each country and region. NORTH AMERICA EUROPE LATIN AMERICA ASIA MEA, RUSSIA Control reputation Monitor competitors Detect influencers Engage on major social networks Find customer insights MEASURE CAMPAIGNS Marketing teams use social media to fuel campaigns and measure results with various metrics (#fans, likes, sentiment, etc.) SO WHAT? Brands struggle to leverage the value of listening and engagement Incentivize teams Build Benchmarks IMPLEMENT ONLINE CUSTOMER SUPPORT Connect social media results with customer surveys toget the full picture of the customer journey Build the voice of the customers Scale across the enterprise Predictive analytics INTEGRATE WITH SALES Compare social media indicatora with customer satisfaction metrics (Net Promoter Score) or sales PREVENT BAD BUZZ Listening is owned by PR team worried about the harm of a potential social media crisis SOCIAL BECOMES STRATEGIC Top management set objectives and clear performance indicators and PR results

3 2. ANSWER THE SO WHAT QUESTION WITH YOUR PREVIOUS PROGRAMS: ANALYZE WHAT WORKED AND WHAT DIDN T Many brands have had listening solutions in place for years, yet have come to doubt the strength of their programs as high-level decision drivers. The success of these programs can be limited by various factors, all of which need to be documented and examined before a new program can be put in place. These factors may include: Wrong vendor -- delivering poor quality of insights (garbage in, garbage out). Current internal and agency organization that is not built for social media scale; unclear reporting structure, little interest from the C-suite, etc 3. CHOOSE THE OPTIMAL ORGANIZATION METHODOLOGY: CENTRALIZED VS. LOCALIZED When implementing a new social intelligence solution, there is a common tendency towards centralization. Many organizations believe that the best course of action is to build a fully centralized listening and engagement platform that can serve all global needs consistently. While this type of structure makes the most sense from a P&L perspective, there are a number of challenges that must be taken into account to ensure success. The most important ones are: Vendor Selection: your vendor needs to do everything well across all regions: consulting, reporting, and technology. Local Considerations: decision makers do not speak local languages and tend to neglect local specificities that can make a tool/service useless in an unfamiliar region (e.g. APAC). Internal Politics: local research teams work with trusted partners (essentially research agencies) and may be reluctant to switch to a new global structure. Budget Controls: budgets are often shared between global and local teams, which complicates the administration and control of spending.

4 Nissan, a successful research organization: 40 countries, a centralized global budget, and one champion to lead all social media initiatives (David Parkinson). Synthesio produces top-level reports based on true business metrics that are reported to the Global CMO. Business metrics include the SRS. Synthesio trained all Nissan agencies (market research and digital) to make the best use of the tool and produce simple ad hoc reports. Synthesio produces complex deep dive reports to serve local and global needs. Synthesio s Insights Team works directly with local and global teams to produce complex deep dive reports (campaign analysis, market trends, product launch, etc.) Why does it work? Nissan follows a top-down approach by focusing first on key business metrics to drive success, and then using tactical insights and KPIs to drive day-to-day activity. Digital teams receive performance incentives based on the SRS. Nissan got local teams deeply involved. Their input on specific local needs was a key component in the choice of the provider. Nissan and Synthesio have been able to involve outsourced teams as well to minimize disruption of existing workflows and business arrangements. Results: consistent improvements in SRS, as well as deeper campaign insights, to drive higher ROI in key product areas. Major CPG company: challenges to building and managing local and global Social Intelligence This US-based global company tried to centralize all social market research needs within one single team based in the US. They ended up choosing a vendor with very little input from non-us teams. After just 3 months, local teams began bypassing the global process to work with their own vendors. The CMO received global KPIs from one vendor and contradictory results from local vendors. After 2 years, all teams are still in the Trough of Disillusionment as defined by Gartner in their Hype Cycle. Visibility Technology Trigger Peak of Inflated Expectation Trough of Dilillusionment Maturity Slope of Enlightenment Plateau of Productivity

5 What did not work? This company did not take local needs into account. The ecosystem of partners was not considered. The success of a Social Intelligence program does not only depend on the selected vendor, but also on the implemented workflow structure; in this case there were inadequate top-down guidelines on the expected workflow. 4. SPEAK THE CEO/CMO LANGUAGE: BUILD BUSINESS-DRIVEN KPIS A crucial step towards achieving enterprise-wide social intelligence is to set up KPIs that address real business challenges. When setting up KPIs, it s important to take stock of the differentiated roles and objectives of each department and team within your organization. Establishing KPIs that are department-specific will help streamline the data gathering and delivery process, ensuring that each department is receiving data relevant to its business practices. But while each team may use social data in different ways, it s critical for all teams to track results against topline business KPIs. Having a social intelligence program that is built upon business-driven metrics will ensure that teams across the enterprise are coordinated in their pursuit of company objectives. 5. AGREE ON A REPORTING STRUCTURE FOR ALL USE CASES (CAMPAIGNS, AUDIT, INSIGHTS, ETC.) Reports can be time consuming, expensive and unscalable. It s important to define in advance the format of report expected and the type of KPIs/insights to be included to maximize value. Social data can be cut, sliced and merged in numerous ways and applied to a wide variety of questions and business issues, but benchmarking is of vital importance when it comes to choosing how you will define and report your KPIs. In a world where data availability is in constant flux and each medium allows for different levels of analysis, it is critical to ensure consistency of approach and choose metrics accordingly. 6. DEFINE AN ACTION PATH FOR ESCALATION: CONNECT & SCALE Connecting social media across departments is imperative because social data represents the voice of customers and can impact all business units (customer care, sales, etc.). Once companies have built the foundations for Social Intelligence they are now ready to connect and scale across their enterprise, making social media data visible throughout the organization; across systems and departments. Social data will no longer be owned by social media teams, but will be treated as a strategic resource for the whole enterprise. You can now use social media insights to influence campaign objectives, sales strategies and resource allocation.

6 Organizations who successfully connect and scale their social marketing initiatives can now see social media data moving fluidly through integrated business tools, across departments and into the hands of whomever needs it. The entire organization can now be more informed and responsive to the voice of the customer. MARKETING Build a community of brand advocates and identify key influencers and key influential websites to improve targeting and gauge the impact of digital campaigns. CUSTOMER SERVICE Improve customer satisfaction. Establish real-time communication between your brand and consumers to improve service and sales. Strengthen brand perception by publicly addressing and resolving issues about your brands and products. MARKET RESEARCH Analyze online conversations, opinions, wants and needs, for a brand and/or topic. Identify a brand s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for improvement, and measure competitor presence and progress. SALES Identify new prospects for lead generation and provide new product info, news and promotions. Use social intelligence to understand consumer wants and needs to integrate into sales materials and pitches. PR Identify a potential crisis before it spreads. Establish a direct dialogue with key journalists, bloggers, etc. Engage in real-time to communicate directly with consumers. HR Control brand image and reputation. Identify new candidates and communicate directly to facilitate the hiring process.

7 7. BUILD A PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS PROGRAM TO OPTIMIZE CAMPAIGNS AND BOOST ROI Buzz Volumes Launching a social campaign without conducting a thorough analysis of your target markets, segments, consumers, and past campaigns can lead to subpar results. That s why it s critical to use social data to fuel campaign creative and strategy, which will boost the performance of your campaigns. At right is a breakdown of the four quadrants of success/failure into which campaigns can fall, based on budget and results. However your campaigns are performing now, it s important to base your social intelligence program on the KPI of shifting your campaigns towards the top left-hand ( Major Success ) quadrant of the chart. As you run more campaigns and gather more data on the Social Reputation Score High Best Campaign MAJOR SUCCESS LIMITED SUCCESS EXPECTED SUCCESS FAIL performance of your campaigns, you can begin to correlate campaign specifics (e.g. content types, timing, Low duration, target markets) with success. Over time this type of analysis will illuminate the types of campaigns Low Budget High that are likely to produce the strongest results and highest ROI for your business. Underperforming campaigns fall into a variety of categories. The most common, visualized by the charts below, are typically referred to within the industry as flop, bad buzz, and no spread. A campaign that flops is one that fails to produce any significant or sustained increase in buzz. A bad buzz campaign is one that generates a boost in buzz but most of it negative. Finally, a no spread campaign is one that produces a very brief and unsustainable, although significant, increase in buzz. Volume of Buzz FLOP Volume of Buzz BAD BUZZ Volume of Buzz NO SPREAD Time Time Time

8 With these examples of underperforming campaigns in mind, let s take a look at what a high-performing campaign might look like: 2 - Peak volumes are 4 to 10x higher than baseline and spread on all social and mainstream media 4 - Higher brand-related conversation volumes 1 - Campaign Stats Volume of Buzz 3 - Lasting Positive Buzz AFTER BEFORE Time While this is just one example of a successful campaign, there are several key points that can be applied generally to your campaign measurement methodology. Ideally, the start of a new campaign will quickly generate a sustained (and steep) upward slope in positive buzz volume (as seen here), which should peak somewhere in the range of 4 to 10x your pre-campaign volume baseline. How long it takes to reach this peak depends on a great number of factors, including the mediums in which your campaign material is appearing, the frequency of content placement, virality, and more. Once your campaign has reached its peak, there should then be a gradual downslope of sustained positive buzz. This drop-off will ideally level out to a post-campaign baseline that is markedly -- if not greatly -- higher than your pre-campaign baseline. It s important to chart the slope of every campaign, regardless of overall success, because over time you will be able to aggregate this information and turn it into an actionable body of historical campaign data. This can then be called upon with each successive campaign to fuel predictive insights that will help you optimize campaign attributes both pre and post-launch. For instance, if you have found that high volume mixed-media campaigns tend to produce faster, higher peaks, that may be a campaign type you wish to rely upon more greatly in the future.

9 Moreover, by mapping each campaign you will be able to compare it to previous ones and develop useful predictions based on the data coming in. If the data appears to suggest suboptimal performance vis-á-vis historical data, then corrective steps can be taken to boost results. Adjusting campaign messaging, content, target markets and geographies, and budget are a few of the steps that brands take to optimize campaigns that seem to flagging in the early stages. Once such steps have been taken, it s then important to gather data on the impact of those corrective measures on campaign performance. Did adjustments in messaging and content boost the campaign peak over what was originally projected? Did an injection of extra budget midway through the campaign help to extend a period of post-peak buzz? Gathering and analyzing these types of data will help you gain a deeper understanding of which corrective actions are promoting higher campaign performance, and which are not as effective. FINAL THOUGHTS Implementing an intelligence program at scale is critical for brands seeking to capitalize on today s social-driven markets and consumers. Before your brand can put such a solution in place, though, it s important to establish and share topline business KPIs, interdepartmental workflows, and execution guidelines throughout the organization such that they are clear to all involved parties. This will ensure that all teams are measuring success against the same overarching business objectives, regardless of departmental differences in business methods and KPIs. Solidifying these details will also pave the way for a predictive analytics program that will help you build stronger campaigns and optimize campaign specifics on the fly. With such a program in place, your campaigns will become a driver of higher ROI. ABOUT SYNTHESIO Synthesio, named THE leader in The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q report, is a Global Social Intelligence Platform. Used by some of the world s top brands, and the agencies that support them, Synthesio is the framework for building social intelligence that provides real business results. Whether an organization s social team is built within Marketing or crosses multiple departments, business units or geographies, Synthesio helps teams listen, analyze, and engage with consumer conversations across social and mainstream media within one platform. Founded in 2006, Synthesio has offices in New York, Paris, London, and Singapore.