A Market Smart 360 White Paper. Simplifying Metrics for Social Media with Market Smart 360

Transcription

1 A Market Smart 360 White Paper Simplifying Metrics for Social Media with Market Smart 360

2 1000 Commerce Park Drive Suite 301 Williamsport, PA P info@adtrak360.com Contents A Vast Opportunity... Blocked by a Major Challenge... is Freed by a Great Solution... 3 The Vast Opportunity... 3 The Millennials Factor... 4 Technology Connection... 5 A Passion for Writing Product Reviews... 6 Moving Ads to Where the Users Are... Social Media... 6 The Major Challenge... 7 Birth of the Chief Social Media Officer... 9 The Great Solution: The Market Smart 360 Market Score Generating Your Own Marketing Score for Free The Marketing Score: Simple to Use Providing the Yardstick Everyone Needs The Marketing Score: Filling a Huge Need Analytics without Hiring Your Own Analysts The Huge Demand for the Solution Vast Opportunities Across the 28 Million Small Businesses in the U.S About Market Smart

3 A Vast Opportunity... Blocked by a Major Challenge... is Freed by a Great Solution Global ad spending on social media will rise more than 33% this year to $23.68 billion. -Steven Perlberg, The Wall Street Journal Face it, human beings don t do a great job of processing long tables of numbers. -Angela Hausman, SAP Business Innovation This brief white paper walks the reader through an overview of the vast opportunity that social media has brought to the world of business. It then examines the major challenge facing all that seek the rewards of social media. And finally looks at the great solution that meets this challenge and frees organizations to tap into the massive rewards of using social media to carry their products and services into the world. The Vast Opportunity It is hard to overstate the massive impact that social media is having upon the world including the world of commerce. Many have called social media: The biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution. While comparing the emergence of social media to the Industrial Revolution may be a bit of an overstatement, it is helpful to take a look at some of the trends and numbers that make analysts and other industry observers so excited about the revolutionary nature of social media, which is still unfolding. Any single element of social media is astonishing on its own, and the additive effect is unprecedented when you consider the collective impact and influence of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, Instagram, Youtube, Flickr, Vine, Meetup, Reddit, blogs, product reviews, and other areas of social media. Consider these figures about just the top 10 social media sites: Facebook has 1.44 billion monthly active users as of April 2015, with 65% of these monthly active users logging in every day 1 1 Why Social Media Matters by John Hutchins, Information Counts, June 18,

4 Youtube has more than 1 billion unique users visit each month, where the number of hours of video watched is measured in the hundreds of millions per day, which is 50% more than last year 2 Twitter has an estimated 310 million unique monthly visitors 3 Linkedin has an estimated 255 million unique monthly visitors 4 Pinterest has an estimated 250 million unique monthly visitors Google+ has an estimated 120 million unique monthly visitors Tumblr has an estimated 110 million unique monthly visitors Instagram has an estimated 100 million unique monthly visitors Flickr has an estimated 65 million unique monthly visitors Vine has an estimated 42 million unique monthly visitors Add these figures from just the 10 top social media sites and you come up with 3.69 billion unique monthly visitors. And that is just the beginning. How many customer reviews of products and services are out on the web? Hard to tell, but Nick Arnett on Quora.com tried to answer the question just for Amazon and came up with 151 million URLs on Amazon with the word review in them. And that was back in The number has certainly soared from there. Added to that could be the all but countless searches for products and services and local listings that users click in each day from their mobile devices. When speaking of social media, one begins sounding a bit like the late astronomer Carl Sagan who was famous for his describing the wonders of the universe in terms of billions upon billions. The billions factor comes through again with the recent Wall Street Journal story, noted above, that was headlined: Social Media Ad Spending to Hit $24 Billion This Year. The Millennials Factor To get a better feel for why global ad spending on social media is growing by 33% for 2015, it is helpful to take a look at the demographics that many of the ad dollars are chasing, and at why. The President s Council of Economic Advisors published a report recently, 15 Economic Facts About Millennials 5 that notes: Millennials now represent 2 Ibid 3 ebiz MBA, June Ibid (for the next 6 bullets as well) 4

5 Figure 1. US Population Distribution by Age, as of 2013 the largest generation in the United States, comprising roughly one-third of the total population in What s more, the largest Millennial one-year age cohort is now only 23. This means that the Millennial generation will continue to be a sizable part of the population for many years. Technology Connection The report also underscores the strong technology connection of the Millennials, noting: Millennials are more connected to technology than previous generations and a quarter of Millennials believe that their relationship to technology is what makes their generation unique. While all generations have experienced technological advances, the sheer amount of computational power and access to information that Millennials have had at their fingertips since grade-school is unparalleled. Of course it isn t just Millennials. Generation X, which precedes the Millennials, is plenty plugged into social media, too. As is a significant part of the Baby Boomers. If it already seems the whole world is moving toward 5 Office of the President 5

6 social media, this momentum will only grow as year-by-year more millennials come of age, and lead the way for the generation that follows. A Passion for Writing Product Reviews The article 15 Facts About Millennials And The Economy That Everyone In Business Should Know 6 notes Millennials are more likely than other generations to share their opinions on the things they buy using emerging social-media technologies. The article also notes: 60% of Millennials actively rate products online versus 46% of other generations. Again, a critically important takeaway here is that it isn t just about the Millennials. While the 60% figure for Millennials writing product reviews is extraordinary, it is also impressive to see that even the older set of Generation X and Boomers are deeply into writing product reviews at 46%. All of this makes it critically important as in mission critical to know what your customers are saying about you online. Moving Ads to Where the Users Are... Social Media To a great extent chasing Millennials is behind the massive move of ad dollars to social media, though everyone else is gravitating to social media and mobile access to social media as well. 60% of Millennials actively rate products online versus 46% of other generations. - Business Insider Fortune Magazine recently ran an article Seven Facts Every Business Should Know about Millennials. 7 The article has two big take-aways: Follow the Money. As the most populous, educated, and diverse generation in American history, millennials are fundamentally changing the landscape of the economy, the Fortune article notes. Over the next five years, the purchasing power of millennials is projected to increase 133% from $600 billion to $1.4 trillion Facts About Millennials And The Economy That Everyone In Business Should Know Business Insider, May 19, Seven Facts Every Business Should Know about Millennials by Chris Altchek, Fortune Magazine, May 27,

7 Meet Millennials (and other mobile-minded consumers) on their Home Turf. Given this generation s exposure to technology since childhood, their expectations will only continue to favor cross-channel and cross-platform experiences that are consistent, fast and provide actionable data, the Fortune article read. Millennials can access content anywhere, anytime and on any device, which has huge implications for traditional TV and cable. It also shouldn t be surprising that with the rejection of traditional formats comes the rejection of traditional advertising. The Wall Street Journal recently hit upon similar insights with an article Why Mobile Advertising May Be All About Micro-Targeting Moments, 8 which refers to a seismic change for advertisers. Underscoring the ubiquity of mobile, the article notes: Overall, 82% of smartphone users consult their phones while they re standing in a store deciding what product to buy. One in 10 of those end up buying a different product than they planned. With the embrace of mobile has come a change in expectations. The powerful computers we carry in our pockets have trained us to expect brands to deliver exactly what we are looking for the moment we are looking, The Wall Street Journal notes. We want things right, and we want things right away. In fact, 69% of online consumers agree that the quality, timing, or relevance of a company s message influence their perception of a brand. The Major Challenge 69% of online consumers agree that the quality, timing, or relevance of a company s message influences their perception of a brand. - The Wall Street Journal We ve just looked at the enormous opportunities social media provides, but the major challenge that all stakeholders face is how to gauge what is working and what isn t within the multifaceted and swiftly shifting world of social media. 8 Why Mobile Advertising May Be All About Micro-Targeting Moments by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Wall Street Journal, April 8,

8 With companies increasing their social media 2015 ad spend by 33% to nearly $14 billion, there has never been a greater need for an easy to use, inexpensive tool to measure an organization s social media effectiveness. The major challenge is how to measure impact of social media and adjust campaigns as needed. Adweek recently summed up the problem in one simple headline: Just 15% of Marketers Think Social Media Software is Useful. 9 A yardstick is needed so that if a company invests X amount of dollars in Facebook ads, and Y amount in Linkedin, and Z amount in creating a new web presence, they can gauge what is helping promote their brand and what isn t. And they need the ability to do granular A/B testing so that if they change a landing page, or launch a new campaign, they can actually see whether their stance within the vast realm of social media is rising, falling, or remaining the same. This need is so great that some companies have created Internet monitors and gauges, but they have tended to be imprecisely focused, expensive to deploy, and difficult to use. These solutions often provide too much data, ignoring the need for easy to use, yet precise, simple metrics. Just 15% of Marketers Think Social Media Software is Useful. - Adweek The difficulty of tracking results from social media investments are a recurring issue. For example: The core challenge in mining social media remains. That is, how can the truly valuable information which represents a small percentage of the overall feed be sifted out from the bulk of useless output? 10 Only 37% of marketers reported moderate to strong confidence in their ability to measure social media ROI. 11 If you struggle to integrate real-time social media analytics and ROI, you re in good company Just 15% of Marketers Think Social Media Software is Useful by Shea Bennett, Adweek, 69% of online consumers agree that the quality, timing, or relevance of a company s message influence their perception of a brand Nov. 19, MarketsMedia, June 30, Social Media Examiner,

9 Social media data is inherently noisy. Reducing noise to even detect signal is challenging especially in real time. 13 Forbes underscored the need for efficient technology for social marketing with its article 20 Digital Trends for At the top of the Forbes list was: Big Data Becoming Big Insights Predictive & Prescriptive Analytics and number 3 on its list was CMO s Evolving Into CTO s. Birth of the Chief Social Media Officer With the vast importance of social media, and the challenges of achieving your goals within this realm, it isn t surprising that CIO.com recently ran an article titled Should You Hire a Chief Social Media Officer? 15 At the risk of giving away the ending, the answer is: Yes, if your organization has the budget to do so. The CIO.com article notes: Without a solid social media presence and professionals to manage that, your business will lack a major mouthpiece to reach potential customers, communicate effectively with your customer base and risk being considered out of touch or obsolete. Adweek recently reported on the growing importance of conversion science 16 in which effective social media programs are driven by data and insight, not assumptions. With data in hand, the next step is to identify key social media metrics, then measure your results, and adjust accordingly. - Adweek With data in hand, the next step is to identify key social media metrics, then measure your results, and adjust accordingly. The common current is that social media holds immense promise, but pulling the relevant information from the huge and dispersed data sets is a massive challenge. The market needs an easy-to-use, intuitive yet precise way of 12 Five Challenges of Real-time Social Media Analytics by Angela Hausman, SAP Business Innovation, July 23, Ibid Digital Trends for 2015 Forbes.com, January 16, Should You Hire a Chief Social Media Officer by Sharon Florentine, CIO.com 16 The Invisible Link Between Social Media and Conversion by Kimberly Grimms, Adweek, Oct. 2,

10 measuring the impact of their efforts across social media, mobile searches, and local listings. While it is great to speak of CMO s becoming CTO s and creating a position for a Chief Social Media Officer, and diving into conversion science, the simple fact is that tracking social media is simply beyond the core competency of most small to medium businesses and even beyond most large organizations. Obstacles include finding the right tools, the technical expertise, and meeting the financial demands required to obtain and retain such resources. Existing offerings also tend to be point solutions: A dashboard for Facebook or a monitor for Twitter, but these specialized solutions tend not to play well together, meaning that they resist the kind of integration required to provide a single, unified, view of what s happening within social media. The Great Solution: The Market Smart 360 Market Score Market Smart 360 was developed specifically to provide organizations of any size with a comprehensive 360 degree view into their position across the spectrum of social media. Market Smart 360 is the great solution that the industry requires because it is simple to deploy, easy to use, comprehensive in its coverage. And it is available for free. The power and beauty of Market Smart 360 is that it provides a desperately needed yardstick which we call the Marketing Score. Without the cost of special analysts, expensive analytical platforms, the Market Score for free provides exactly the kind of yardstick Adweek spoke of in terms of using conversion science to identify key social media metrics, then measure your results, and adjust accordingly. Generating Your Own Marketing Score for Free The Marketing Score is generated by our The Market Score for free provides exactly the kind of yardstick Adweek spoke of in terms of using conversion science to identify key social media metrics, then measure your results, and adjust accordingly. 10

11 algorithmic engine that measures a company s own social media position, while also allowing them to compare themselves with the marketing impact of competitors. Market Smart 360 also provides a Dashboard and Tracking Console from which users can consolidate a large array of their marketing efforts and ensure their inclusion in local listings a critically important element given the enormity with which everyday mobile users search for products and services. While we expect most businesses will see the value in our additional services that can be activated, the Market Smart 360 score and dash board are free. The Market Smart 360 Platform has many business tools that users are taking advantage of to help them grow some available for less than $15 per month. The great advantage of the Market Smart 360 Dashboard is the more products and services you add, the more relevant the score becomes because Figure 2. The Market Smart 360 Dashboard shows your current Marketing Score, along with its changes over time, and how you compare with others. Note in this case, the Marketing Score is up 9 points from the day before. all data collected runs through the patent-pending scoring engine and is displayed directly on your own free dashboard. This enables you to know exactly how your initiatives are performing as they contribute to your overall Marketing Score. The Marketing Score: Simple to Use The Marketing Score is generated with our proprietary analytics engine that uses a custom algorithm to scour the web for relevant data and weight its meaning. Users enter their business name (or personal name, for individual tracking), address and phone number. For more precise results, enter social media information as well, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Analytics accounts. Our analytics engine also searches out reviews, to see how your 11

12 products and services are viewed by others. Providing the Yardstick Everyone Needs Once your initial Marketing Score is generated, you can use this as a baseline number against which you can continuously measure as you adjust ad buys, mobilize your website, launch a mobile app, tweak a home page, start an e- mail campaign, or make any other changes to your marketing efforts. Step by step you can see whether your Marketing Score is going up, down, or remaining the same. The Marketing Score is the yardstick everyone needs. As shown in Figure 2, your Marketing Score, displayed on the Market Smart 360 Dashboard, graphs the score s movement across 1-day, 7-day, and 30-day periods. The Marketing Score: Filling a Huge Need The need for something like our Marketing Score can be traced back to before the Civil War when the legendary American retailer John Wanamaker opened his first store and went on to build a retailing empire Figure 3. Your Marketing Score is displayed on that at his death in 1922 was the Market Smart 360 Dashboard, along with a valued at $100 million or about wealth of other data. $1.5 billion in today s dollars. (His son went on to, among other things, create the Professional Golf Association, and fund an annual competition that today is known as the PGA Championship complete with the Wanamaker Trophy.) Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." That famous quote from Wanamaker still rings true today. The Marketing Score was created to help organizations better determine from the Wanamaker perspective which half of the money they spend on advertising is wasted, and which half is working. In more contemporary terms: 12

13 Organizations can use their Marketing Score as a yardstick to determine exact ROI from a specific campaign, down to the particular form of media within that campaign. From a competitive analytics standpoint, you can use the Market Smart 360 Dashboard to compare your Marketing Score against competitors and national averages. You can use your Marketing Score, and the Market Smart 360 Platform to enhance marketing efforts in a number of ways, including: Evaluate. All your marketing efforts with current and potential customers are measured, analyzed and stored all together in our dashboard helping you see how your business stacks up against the competition. Monitor. Monitor all your products in one quick glance. With our easy to navigate dashboard, you are able to identify and respond to any changes as a result of your marketing efforts. Improve. Our dashboard offers recommendations and a variety of products that can be used to improve your marketing efforts. Our tools help you increase your online presence and aid you in generating quality leads. Ensure Presence in Local Listings. You can use the Market Smart 360 Platform to automatically ensure your presence in local listings across all markets of interest, while verifying the listings are correct and current. Analytics without Hiring Your Own Analysts The kind of analytics generated for free by the Marketing Score and the Market Smart 360 Platform are currently the kind of data that can only be generated by hiring a roomful of analysts and giving them massive big data resources. We created Market Smart 360 to level the playing field, and to bring this essential information to organizations large or small for free, or for the cost of a few coffees per month for our premium services. For more information about the features and benefits of Market Smart 360 and the Marketing Score, please see our white paper Bringing Metrics to Social Media with Market Smart

14 The Huge Demand for the Solution When quantifying the market potential for something like the Market Smart 360 Market Score, it is helpful to consider just how many businesses could benefit from using the Market Score. The answer turns out to be as astonishing as it is easy to find. According to the US Census Bureau, there are about 28 million businesses in the United States. If 90% of those have a website, or even a local listing, they could benefit from using their Market Score to gauge where they currently are within the realm of social media, and how subsequent efforts move the needle. Based on that 90% figure, there are more than 25 million businesses in just the United States that can benefit from the Market Score. Vast Opportunities Across the 28 Million Small Businesses in the U.S. Taking a closer look at the 28 million businesses in the United States, you see vast opportunities. Small businesses are generally defined as fewer than 100 employees, and medium sized businesses are generally defined as 100 to 1,000 employees. The U.S. Small Business Administration reports 17 that small to medium sized businesses in America Taking a closer look at the 28 million businesses in the United States, you see vast opportunities. account for 54% of all U.S. sales. Small businesses provide 55% of all jobs and 66% of all net new jobs since the 1970s. There s a special, and very large, sweet spot that covers the entire realm of small to medium-sized businesses. The Market Score would be a huge help to even the largest of enterprises, yet it is also relevant to even the smallest. Even the corner auto mechanic is likely these days to have a website, automated reminders, and special offerings. With Market Score it doesn t matter whether the coupons are delivered by the mailman, by , or downloadable from the site. Any campaign can be measured to see if it moves your social media stature. 17 U.S. Small Business Administration 14

15 With that in mind, let s look at just how many businesses of different size are out there, according to the U.S. Census and the U.S. Small Business Administration. Even a company with 10 to 30 employees is likely to have (or certainly should have) a social media presence. Proceeding from the assumption that virtually every business in the U.S. has (or should have) a social presence, and that every company with a social presence can benefit from using the Market Score as a yardstick to measure the impact of special offers, campaigns, web re-designs, and any other factors and that since the basic Market Score is free, there is no financial barrier the potential market is vast. Consider these SBA figures covering companies just in the United States (and excluding the millions of sole-proprietorship non-employer firms which could also benefit from Market Score): 5,814,654 businesses with 1 employee 7,580,324 businesses with 2 to 4 employees 2,100,398 businesses with 5 to 9 employees 1,339,184 businesses with 10 to 24 employees 843,158 businesses with 25 to 49 employees 297,156 businesses with 50 to 99 employees 162,103 businesses with 100 to 249 employees 37,034 businesses with 250 to 499 employees 15,811 businesses with 500 to 999 employees 7,158 businesses with 1,000 to 2,499 employees 4,180 businesses with 2,500 to 4,999 employees 1,707 businesses with 5,000 to 9,999 employees 1,811 businesses with 10,000 or more employees Grab any subset you like, and the numbers are big. Focusing on small companies those with less than 100 employees, and you 17,974,874 potential Market Score users. Add in the 214,948 medium sized businesses from 100 to 999 employees and you re well past 18 million businesses with a deep and ever growing need for the kind of metrics provided by the Market Score. Market Score provides a desperately needed yardstick for free to the millions of businesses in the United States and beyond that need to see where they stand within the realm of social media, and how their marketing 15

16 efforts move the needle. About Market Smart 360 Market Smart 360, creators of the Marketing Score, provides a social media analytics engine that helps organizations quantify and track their impact across the spectrum of social media. The analytics engine powering the Marketing Score is a tightly integrated element of the Market Smart 360 Platform which provides a suite of services enabling organizations to manage and track an array of marketing activities. For more information, please contact us at , or visit us at 16