By following a seven-step process to identify and recruit potential brand ambassadors in online social networks, an ice cream retailer substantially improved the effectiveness of its social media marketing.
With the growth of social media, influencing consumer preferences and purchase decisions through online social networks and word of mouth is an increasingly important part of every marketer’s job. Companies such as Geico, Dell and eBay are adapting the traditional “one-way” advertising message and using it as a stepping-stone to begin a two-way dialogue with consumers via social media.
Marketers know that theoretically, social media should be a powerful way to generate sustainable, positive word-of-mouth marketing. If marketers can only select the right social media platform, design the right message and engage the right users to spread that message, their campaign should be a success.
One successful campaign — which marketers can look to as an example — took place at Hokey Pokey Ice Cream Creations, an upscale ice-cream retailer with more than a dozen outlets across India. By following a seven-step process to identify and recruit potential brand ambassadors in online social networks, Hokey Pokey Ice Cream Creations substantially improved the effectiveness of its social media marketing. Specifically, Hokey Pokey’s social media campaign resulted in substantial increases in brand awareness, social media ROI and sales revenue growth rate for the company.
In addition to providing details of Hokey Pokey’s campaign, this article provides three new metrics developed for use in social media marketing campaigns: the Customer Influence Effect, which measures the influence a social media user has on other users in the network; the Stickiness Index, which helps identify social media users who actively discuss the company’s product or service category; and Customer Influence Value, which helps measure the monetary gain or loss realized by a company in social marketing campaigns by accounting for an individual’s influence on purchases by other customers and prospects.
1 Comment On: Increasing the ROI of Social Media Marketing
Congratulations. This is exactly what I am writing about in my book “Ik ben een aanrader” – soon to be published in English too.
This is an excerpt
“WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
> You must be aware of the balance of power between the different
recommenders in your market. They will decide your share in that
market, which in turn will be a reflection of the up-and-down turbulence
operating within the group of recommenders.
> You must find out who are the recommenders of your brand and
who are not, both at group level and individual level.
> You need to know which recommenders are content-makers and
which recommenders are networkers, who spread that content.
Remember: they are both recommenders in their different ways!
> You need to know why they recommend your brand – or why not.
And what brands are they recommending, if they are not recommending
yours.
> Only when you collect and continually update all this data will you be
able to understand the individual actors and the relationships within
the recommender group.
> Continually enrich your data with data from other non-competing
brands, so that you can build up a comprehensive brand profile of the
different recommender segments and the individual recommenders.”
Jan Van den Bergh.