Over the holidays, I had some time to really dive into the LinkedIn B2B LeadGen Roundtable discussions. One started by Ann Thornley-Brown, President & CEO, Executive Oasis International, Toronto, caught my attention. She started the discussion in August, yet members continue to provide feedback.
Ann wanted to know how happy the group was with the lead generation results of their social media campaigns. “Are your efforts on LinkedIn and Twitter paying off?” she queried. “How many leads have you generated? How many specific pieces of business have you picked up? I know a lot of bright people who are really active on these sites and very few are seeing results. How about you?”
Her question, and too many of her 30-plus responses, illustrated the disconnection between the expectations of marketers who are out on the frontlines every day and marketing gurus proclaiming the wonders of social media. After all, if you Google ”Top 10 B2B Trends in 2011” you’ll see social media listed on every one of them.
Then why, if Ann’s discussion is any indication, are so many marketers dissatisfied with the results they’re getting from it?
I took this question to Sergio Balegno, Director of Research for company of InTouch. He authors MarketingSherpa’s Social Media & PR Benchmark Guides, is considered a foremost authority on social media strategy, is quoted by the media extensively and presents at institutions likeHarvard.
He’s also been in marketing for more than three decades, well before the internet was even on the scene. This gives him some not-so-typical long-term perspective in a world that demands instant gratification.
If anyone could provide insight to why this is going on, it’s Sergio. Here’s his take:
“I had a B2B communications firm from the mid-80s to 2000. When we got into the ‘90s we started hearing about the World Wide Web. I brought the concept to our customers: some adopted it very quickly the other half shrugged it off as a passing fad.
“Of course, today, the web is considered traditional media and social media is now that new ‘fad.’ The same thing is happening all over again, except at a much faster pace.
“You see, you have to look at the history of social media, it’s really short. Our first benchmark guide was published in 2009, which analyzed the use of social media in 2008. It was at the ‘all-hype’ stage then: there were no clear objectives or best practices beyond the soft objectives of building customer awareness. There weren’t the hard-and-fast lead generation and sales conversations that will be featured in our 2011 report, which I’m working on right now.
“What does surprise me is that of the 2,300 marketers we surveyed at the end of 2010, six percent - 138 - already felt they were producing measurable ROI. In just a couple of years, social media has rocketed to a place that took the internet a good decade to arrive at.
“A big part of the 2011 Social Marketing Benchmark Report will look at the monetization of social media. A solid quarter of marketers are at the mature, strategic stage of social media marketing. They have clear objectives and practices. Now they’re trying to go back to the budgeting committee to prove that it’s producing revenue.
“That’s where they’re stuck.They can’t get a grasp on how many leads social media is generating.
“A big section of the study is going to be about software and tools that can track someone from when they become a member of a social network to when they download a whitepaper and become a part of a standard CRM system.
“Essentially, we’re at critical mass: marketers need to prove social media’s value, and there is a need for CRM tools that can track that. Mzinga is one company leading the way with its OmniSocial platform, the study will review more.”
Considering Sergio’s response, marketers are expecting way too much too soon. Paradoxically, this in itself demonstrates the remarkable speed at which social media is being integrated into marketing initiatives.
We can’t yet calculate with the most exacting precision how many leads are generated from social media, but considering how quickly technology is evolving, the ability to do so will be here in no time. I expect if Ann poses her question again at the end of 2012, her responses will be far different.
What do you think?
Finally, Sergio gave me some penetrating insight at the end of our conversation: “After 30 years in marketing, I thought I had seen all of the changes that could possibly take place, and then social media changed everything again. Our brand is no longer what we say it is, it’s what our customers say it is.”
If you want to hear more from Sergio, be sure to sign up for MarketingSherpa's brand new Inbound Marketing Newsletter, which will announce when the 2011 Social Marketing Benchmark guide is released. The newsletter is published bi-weekly and explores the power of new marketing tools, including social media, to attract customers without advertising. Click here to see the inaugural edition. Click here to subscribe.
Originally published on the B2B Lead Generation Blog
I'm not doing cartwheels over the new HTML5 logo, which reminds me of a superhero badge. It's bold, masculine and sort of orange, which will appeal how to the majority of web users? But the logo is a great idea, and it's big splash promotion -- some of that from Microsoft -- is exactly what the standard-in-progress needs right now.
Today in a blog post, Jean Paoli, Microsoft's general manager of interoperability, writes: "The logo links back to W3C, the place for authoritative information on HTML5, including specs and test cases. It's time to tell the world that HTML5 is ready to be adopted."
There's a strange appropriateness to Microsoft promoting the logo's use. It's what the company did in the late 1990s to promote Internet Explorer. During the so-called browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape, each side adopted proprietary tags not necessarily supported in the other's browser. Microsoft encouraged websites supporting Internet Explorer to put up an IE logo/badge -- to be proud, to proclaim their support. As a marketing mechanism, the logo branding was brilliant and quite uncommon.
I remember interviewing Sun cofounder and then chief executive Scott McNealy in his office about Java; some time in 1997. McNealy, an avid amateur hockey player, limped from an injury on the ice from the night before. I scolded McNealy, calling him a boy who cried wolf, for making promise after promise after promise about Java -- like powering light switches -- that never came to be. He didn't get upset at that but my accusations about Java branding. I observed that Internet Explorer logos were on tens of thousands of websites, while Java was seemingly nowhere. If developers are using Java, why are they keeping a secret, I accused. McNealy responded by pointing across the room at his Java terminal and the tiny logo on the side. He blamed his marketers for not listening.
Someone listened, or observed -- that is Microsoft's browser, and the logo program was one reason. The US Justice Department painted a black-and-white case about Microsoft triumphing over Netscape during the browser wars. Simply stated: Microsoft abused its monopoly position in desktop operating systems to gain dominance in the adjacent browser market. I don't agree with that simplistic portrayal. Microsoft's success was about more than integrating the browser into the operating system. Microsoft also made huge investments in developer programs and branding and marketing efforts. The logo program was among them.
I'm not asserting that developers and downloaders adopted IE over Netscape simply because of a logo program. That said, no one should misunderstand the influence a well-placed logo can have. Take for example TV networks, which not long after the browser wars, started putting their logos in the lower right-hand side of the screen. It's about brand recognition and in some ways territory marking -- the network asserting: "This is my content."
On the web, the logo means something more. If the popular sites support Internet Explorer there must be a reason for that. People take social cues from one another all the time, about the clothes other people where, the cars they drive, the jewelry they wear and in the 2010s which smartphones they carry (and what apps are on them). In the late 1990s, pervasive IE logos indicated that Internet Explorer was the happening browser -- to developers and web surfers.
The HTML5 logo is even more significant, and its usage communicates that the standard is ready enough to adopt. More web developers will support HTML5 as they see others doing so. Microsoft's support communicates something, too. Right now, IE has a reputation for being a non-standards browser, mainly because of persistent IE6 usage and the still-supported ActiveX plug-in architecture. Large businesses are among the biggest consumers of ActiveX, which holds back the browser's future development (backwards compatibility is a Microsoft customer priority). Microsoft's loud support for HTML5 and now its logo communicates to legacy customers and developers that the future is something else. It's one thing for Google to call for HTML5 support, and something all together different for Microsoft -- the company with the perpetual Internet Explorer standards non-compliance black eye -- to do so.
The logo is important, as is Microsoft's promoting it. Paoli and I agree. He writes: "As developer and site owners see this logo across the web, we hope it will signal that while there is still a lot of work to do until all the HTML5 technologies are ready, real sites are starting to take advantage of them today."
There remains one question. What's your reaction to the HTML5 logo? OK another: Will you mark you territory with the HTML5 logo? Please answer in comments.
rock tops granite rip off, rock tops granite, rock tops granite scam, rock tops granite horrible experience, rock tops granite scam, rock tops granite scam, rock tops granite, rock tops granite horrible experience, rock tops granite, rock tops granite scam, rock tops granite horrible experience, rock tops granite horrible experience, rock tops granite horrible experience, rock tops granite scam, rock tops granite horrible experience, rock tops granite rip off
<b>News</b>.Me: Here's The NY Times' Answer to The Daily
TechCrunch has an exclusive look at News.me, a new social news iPad app that keys you into what your friends are reading/linking to, while allowing you share the news you're reading as well. Will it compete with The Daily?
Small Business <b>News</b>: Social Media Business Success?
Hey, is your small business using social media? Could be blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare you name it! While not so long ago there were plenty of people.
<b>News</b> Corp has spent $30M on The Daily iPad newspaper | VentureBeat
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining ...
No comments:
Post a Comment