Servant of Chaos

Survey: Australian Social Business - 2H 2012

Late last year I surveyed Australian businesses about their social business “readiness”. I wanted to determine whether the same business patterns and modes of adoption shown in the US had surfaced in local businesses:

The results indicated that marketers are increasingly comfortable with digital channels and are shifting their budgets accordingly. This shift appears to be happening regardless of business size – and surprisingly – regardless of a firm connection between investment and business value.

While the first survey focused on marketing and external communications – essentially the customer side of the business process – this survey also covers other areas such as collaboration, employee engagement and so on.

Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey – and be sure to provide your email address to receive a free copy of the final report.

For B2B, Google+ May Be Your Best Friend

For years I worked in business to business marketing in one form or another. I understood how all the different channels worked, loved the way that the newly emerging web brought immediacy to my communications and got a sense that the concept of “branding” was shifting under my feet.

And then I landed in the world of business to consumer marketing – working for an agency on big FMCG/entertainment and QSR brands. Despite years of experience I felt out of my depth. And one of the most challenging aspects was understanding the nature of SCALE. In the B2B world, your focus is on much more narrowly defined audiences – whereas for large consumer brands, scale is what works.

Over the last 10 years there has been a lot of cross-pollinating between B2B and B2C. Much of this has been driven by social media – or by our new appreciation of audiences that are a by-product of social media. Yet, I can’t help feeling a little disappointed that we haven’t learned another lesson of social media – that it’s not scale or reach that is important. It’s the engagement – and the potential to impact BEHAVIOUR – that is vital.

Take a look at this infographic from Pardot comparing Google+ and Facebook brand pages. The numbers are huge. The scale is amazing. But think about it – in B2B you often know WHO you want to reach (I don’t mean “who” in terms of a persona – I mean actual people working in actual businesses). The challenge is to find innovative and creative ways to not just reach, but to engage and prompt them to action. And if you think about that rather than the being dazzled by statistics, you might just find that Google+ is your new best friend.

Lots of Trends, But the Direction is Mobile

In the marketing world, we love trends. We use them to help us spot and understand what is happening in our marketplaces and what is shifting in the worlds of our customers. They can also be used to help us identify where we have gaps in our customer engagement strategy or where a competitive advantage is opening up.

But so often we focus only on the trend and miss the greater underlying movement that is taking place.

Take a look at this presentation from Edelman Digital. The focus is on trends across Asia Pacific – but the reality of this is, that the same can be easily applied to any country. We are, after all, globally connected. And when I say “we”, I mean “consumers”.

Edelman Digital APAC 2012 Trends

View more presentations from Edelman Digital APAC

As the presentation points out, trends like “touch (see) and go” and “convergence emergence” are not just on the horizon – they are happening and visible in our marketplace now. And tying this to the Edelman Trust Barometer – a measure of the trustworthiness of our institutions – shows precisely why social networks and dominating the thinking of so many business executives.

But for my money, it’s not the trends that are important for us all to consider. It’s the direction. The report touches on this under “Trend 8: Device Freedom” – but reading between the lines, it’s clear that there is a substantial shift in consumer behaviour underway. And it will impact every angle, every industry, every message and every business – whether we like it or not. It’s the ever increasing ubiquity of the mobile phone (particularly the smart phone). It’s already changing the way we shop and the way we work, but it’s going to go further than most businesses are ready for.

Those that prepare and move earlier will be well placed to guide the customer experience and transform the notion of trust that is at the heart of our often fragile sense of brand loyalty. Those that fail to move may find that they fail in more ways than one. It’s taken well over 10 years to get to the year of the mobile, but the trending time is over – the direction is clear and it’s in the palm of your hand.

Social Brand or Social Business: Chicken or Egg?

The Pivot Conference, to be held October 15-16, 2012 is shaping up in a very interesting way. The focus is to move from “social brands to social business” – which I find exciting – but it also makes me wonder. Do we really feel that we are in a world of social brands as yet? And I am also wondering, can you have a social brand without first becoming a social business? What comes first, chicken or egg?

In the lead up to the Pivot Conference, a research report has been released: The State of Social Marketing 2011-12. You have to register for it, but it is a great summary and well worth it.

Throughout the report, there is a consistent theme – the gap between the business and your customers is wider than you think. My experience bears this out and is reinforced by IBM’s recent Social CRM report (2011). The gap, which IBM terms “the perception gap” is a real and persistent challenge for organisations and needs to be seriously addressed in the coming months.

Take a look, for example, at the business focus for social media for 2012. The State of Social Marketing report indicates that sales, consumer engagement and lead generation are at the top three priorities.

Yet how many businesses have closed the perception gap? How many can deliver on their customer’s expectations – or worse – how many have even begun engaging with their customers about these expectations? The report states that only 34.8% have asked their customers. That’s not a gap. It’s a gulf.

Social Business Comes First

At the recent Social Media Plus conference, I described the challenge that we are facing as being similar to the difference between playing 80s arcade game Space Invaders and Angry Birds. On the business side, we are happily engaged with the invading hoardes – identifying the opportunity then firing off a response. The problem is, is that the game itself has changed. We may be playing Space Invaders – but our customers are playing Angry Birds. It is a profound mismatch.

The idea of a “social brand” sounds good – and there are plenty of examples of successful social marketing now available. But my view is that we have the cart before the horse. Before we can truly claim to have a social brand, we need to engage in the hard work of transforming our business processes and practices first.

We need to become social businesses first – and the social marketing will naturally follow.