Presentation Transcript

1. Lecture 27E-Marketing

   Social Media Online Partnerships Instructor: HanniyaAbid Assistant Professor COMSATS Institutue of Information Technology
2. Objectives In today’s lecture we will, Summarize Social Media Marketing After this lecture you will be able to know about Online partnerships Types of online partnerships
3. Increase sales to existing customers Applying social media to increase sales to existing customers centres on developing your customer communications strategy to encourage more social interactions on your site and on your social outposts. As with all communications strategies this will cover: Your objectives Your target audiences Value to be offered through content and offers Integration of communications
4. Enhance customer service Through improving customer service social media is not a major focus of this guide since we focus on communications that directly increase sales through reaching or converting more of an audience. Social listening to identify customers requiring service Outreach to answer customer questions or resolve problems Using service to improve product and service offerings Management of a company’s own service forums or other service platforms like Get Satisfaction
5. Harness insights to develop the brand using SMO This is optimization! Thinking from the customer perspective, SMO is about making brand interactions easier. That’s easier to: Discover Interact Share Return to through time Lead to purchase
6. Transforming your business How you will make the change needed happen. ? To help manage change, these are some key areas of delivering this transformation we have seen in companies we have worked with and advised: 1. Set scope for social media activities to communicate to staff. 2. Review social media capabilities and priorities. 3. Governance: define who is responsible for social media. 4. Review brand personality and vision.
7. Transforming your business Governance - who is responsible for our social media Strategy– We have this covered through. Structure - is a separate team (or resource) in a smaller company needed? Shared Values - how are cultural shifts shared? Skills - Are new team skills required? Style - Change to organization culture? Staff - Change in roles? Systems - are new ways of working, new processes required?
8. Transforming your business Having the right evaluation and monitoring tools and using them is also a key transformation success factor which relates to systems, skills and staff. US-based social media consultant Olivier Blanchard (The Brand Builder) recommends that social media management must be designed to plug into all business functions from market research to customer service so that they each have a role.
9. Transforming your business There does need to be a single point of control of the strategy and resources for managing activities, but there should be clear goals and responsibilities for social media marketing for each team: Sales Customer Support Human Resources Public Relations Marketing
10. Other Social Media Governance Policies Key areas to ensure are covered as part of your Social Media Governance policy: 1. Training & Education 2. Do’s & Don’ts 3. Brand Guidelines 4. Reviewing brand personality and vision
11. Summary We reviewed these social media marketing activities which will together for strategy for social media marketing Listen and manage reputation Transform the brand through social media Approaches to acquire new customers Approaches to increase sales to existing customers Approaches to deliver customer service
12. Online Partnerships Partnerships are an important part of today ’s marketing mix. The same is true online. Resources must be devoted to managing your online partners. Many large organizations have specific staff to manage these relationships. In smaller organizations it is often neglected – a big missed opportunity.
13. Types Of Online Partnerships There are three key types of online partnerships that need to be managed: Link-building, Affiliate marketing and Online sponsorship. All should involve a structured approach to managing links through to your site
14. Link-building Link building is a key activity for search engine optimization. It ’s simple logic! More quality links from relevant sites mean more quality visitors and more marketing outcomes. Checklist of six best practice approaches to link-building:
15. Link-building 1 Achieve natural link-building through quality content – Through creating ‘ must-have ’ resources and guides and using social bookmark tools such as www.addthis.com to encourage visitors to bookmark these documents creates inbound links from sources such as Delicious. 2 Request inbound-only or one-way links from partners or through running a link-building campaign.
16. Link-building 3 Reciprocal linking – Reciprocal links are agreed between yourself and another organization. These are less valuable than one-way links, but from trusted sources are usually better than no links at all. Use the Yahoo Site Explorer ( https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com ) to identify potential link partners by assessing your own or rival sites.
17. Link-building 4 Buying links – Directories and link purchase exchanges (these are not recommended since such sites are widely believed to be penalized by Google when identified). However, Google is unlikely to be able to identify agreements between site owners . . .
18. Link-building 5 Creating your own external links – On blogs and in community forums – not typically successful since many forums have introduced an attribute tag on outbound links known as rel ‘nofollow ’ which means that the search engine can potentially ignore these links. 6 Generating buzz through PR – Optimize and distribute your press releases or create articles which contain links back to your site which can be syndicated to third-party sites.
19. Link-building 5 Creating your own external links – On blogs and in community forums – not typically successful since many forums have introduced an attribute tag on outbound links known as rel ‘nofollow ’ which means that the search engine can potentially ignore these links. 6 Generating buzz through PR – Optimize and distribute your press releases or create articles which contain links back to your site which can be syndicated to third-party sites.
20. Affiliate Marketing Affiliate marketing is the ultimate form of marketing communications since it ’s pay-perperformance– it ’s a commission-based arrangement where the merchant only pays when they make the sale or get a lead.
21. Affiliate Marketing Compare this to the wastage with traditional advertising or direct mail! It can also drive a volume of business in a range of sectors – many banks, travel companies or online retailers get more than 10% of their sales from a well-run affiliate marketing programme. It ’s not so suitable though for business products or lower priced consumer products since it won ’ t be sufficiently profitable for the affiliates.
22. Affiliate Marketing The affiliate marketing model (note that the tracking software and fee payment may be managed through an independent affiliate network manager)
23. Affiliate Marketing To manage the process of finding affiliates, updating product information, tracking clicks and making payments, many companies use an affiliate network or affiliate manager such as Commission Junction ( www.cj.com )
24. Affiliate Marketing Since the affiliate network takes a cut on each sale, many merchants also try to set up separate relationships with preferred affiliates often known as ‘ super affiliates ’ . Many of the benefits of affiliate marketing are closely related to search engine marketing since affiliates are often expert at deploying SEO or PPC to gain visibility in the natural search results. The main benefits of affiliate marketing are:
25. Affiliate Marketing ● Gain more visibility in the paid and natural listings of the SERPs (increase ‘ share of search ’ ). ● Can use different affiliates to target different audiences, product categories and related phrases. ● Affiliates may be more responsive than your in-house or agency terms in terms of algorithm changes for SEO or changes in bidding approaches for PPC. For example, they may be quicker at advertising on new products, or may use keyphrase variants that you haven’ t considered.
26. Affiliate Marketing ● Enables you to reach customers on generic phrases (e.g. ‘ clothing ’ ) at a relatively low cost if the affiliates secure better positions in natural listings. ● Increase the reach of your brand or campaign since affiliate ads and links featuring you will be displayed on third-party sites.
27. Affiliate Marketing ● Can be used to generate awareness of brand or new products for which a company isn’ t well known. ● Use of affiliates reduces the risk caused by temporary or more fundamental problems with your SEM management. ● Pay per performance – the costs of acquisition can be controlled well.
28. Affiliate Marketing But there are substantial disadvanrages to an affiliate marketing programme which arise from the fact that your affiliates are mainly motivated by money. It follows that some of them may use unethical techniques to increase their revenue. Potential disadvantages are:
29. Affiliate Marketing ● Incremental profit or sales may be limited. ●Affiliates may exploit your brand name. This is particularly the case where affiliates exploit brand names by bidding on variations of it (for example ‘ Dell ’ , ‘Dell Computers ’ or ‘ Dell laptop ’ ) or by gaining a presence in the natural listings. Here there is already awareness. It is important to prevent this and many affiliate programmes exclude brand bidding although affiliates can have a role in displacing competitors from the listings for brand terms.
30. Affiliate Marketing Affiliates may exploit your brand name. This is particularly the case where affiliates exploit brand names by bidding on variations of it (for example ‘ Dell ’ , ‘Dell Computers ’ or ‘ Dell laptop ’ ) or by gaining a presence in the natural listings. Here there is already awareness. It is important to prevent this and many affiliate programmes exclude brand bidding although affiliates can have a role in displacing competitors from the listings for brand terms.
31. Affiliate Marketing ● May damage brand reputation. Your ads may be displayed on sites inconsistent ● Programme management fees. If using an affiliate network to manage your campaigns they may take up to 30% of each agreed affiliate commission as additional ‘network overridge ’ . ● Programme management time. Affiliate marketing is found on forming and maintaining good relationships. This cannot be done through the agency alone – marketers within a company need to speak to their top affiliates.
32. Affiliate Marketing Online marketers also need to be selective in choosing the right forms of affiliate marketing – not all may be desirable. These are the options of affiliate marketing models for you to consider. 1 Aggregators – These are the big comparison, sites like Kelkoo, Shopzilla and MoneySupermarket. These aren ’t strictly affiliates since most charge per click, but Google, Product Search (formerly Froogle) is a free option and you should definitely consider creating a product feed for some of these comparison sites.
33. Affiliate Marketing 2 Review sites – You ’ll know the CNet reviews or maybe startups like Reevoo or Review Centre. These all link to merchants based on cost per click or cost per acquisition deals. 3 Rewards sites – With names like GreasyPalm or QuidCo you get the idea. These split the commission between the reward site and their visitors.
34. Affiliate Marketing 4 Voucher code sites – MyVoucherCodes or Hot UK Deals are typical. If you have some great deals to entice first time shoppers you should generate business, although many search by well-known brand. 5 Uber-bloggers – Martin Lewis ’s MoneySavingExpert.com is an incredibly popular site due to his PR efforts and great content. Although he has no ads, he is an affiliate for many sites he recommends
35. Affiliate Marketing 6 Everyone else – They don ’t tend to be high volume super-affiliates like all the above, but they ’ re collectively important and you can work them via affiliate networks like Commission Junction or Tradedoubler. They often specialize in SEO or PPC. Don ’t expect this option to be easy since affiliates often only promote a few well-known merchants who maximize their Earnings Per 1000 Clicks (EPC).
36. Online sponsorship Online sponsorship is not straightforward. It ’s not just a case of mirroring existing ‘real world’ sponsorship arrangements in the ‘virtual world ’. There are many additional opportunities for sponsorship online which can be sought out, even if you don ’t have a big budget at your disposal.
37. Online Sponsorship Ryan and Whiteman (2000) define online sponsorship as: ‘ the linking of a brand with related content or context for the purpose of creating brand awareness and strengthening brand appeal in a form that is clearly distinguishable from a banner, button or other standardized ad unit ’ .
38. Online Sponsorship For the advertiser, online sponsorship has the benefit that their name is associated with an online brand that the site visitor is already familiar with. So, for users of the ISP Wanadoo, with whom they are familiar, sponsorship builds on this existing relationship and trust. Closely related is online ‘ co-branding ’ where there is an association between two brands.
39. Online Sponsorship Paid-for sponsorship of another site, or part of it, especially a portal for an extended period, is another way to develop permanent links. Co-branding is a lower-cost method of sponsorship and can exploit synergies between different companies. Sponsorship does not have to directly drive visitors to a brand site – it may be more effective if interaction occurs on the media owner’s microsite.
40. Summary We reviewed three key types of online partnerships: 1 Link-building; obtaining links from third-party sites to a company site. This should be performed in a structured manner to maximize visitors from third-party sites and to help increase page rank within Google. 2 Affiliate marketing; a commission-based arrangement where referring sites are paid a fee for sales, leads or visitors. It is potentially a large source of quality traffic for e-retailers. 3 Online sponsorship; a long-term arrangement to associate a brand with a site, or part of a site.
41. The last thing for your to do… Explore: www.a4uforum.co.uk. Used by affiliates to discuss appraoches and compare programmes. IAB’s Affiliate Marketing guide
42. Opt-in email Savvy e-marketers understand that opt-in e-mail is a powerful online communications tool. As with direct mail it is most widely used for direct response, but e-newsletters in particular can also achieve branding objectives. It enables a targeted message to be pushed out to a customer to inform and remind and they are certain to view at least the subject line within their e-mail inbox, even if it is only to delete it. Contrast this with the web – a pull medium where customers will only visit your site if there is a reason or a prompt to do this. But there is a problem; in the minds of many Internet users, e-mail is evil. It is SPAM, unsolicited e-mail sent by unscrupulous traders. Some say SPAM stands for ‘Sending Persistent Annoying E-mail ’, but it actually originates from the Monty Python sketch. Remember that SPAM is now outlawed in many countries
43. To achieve the potential benefits of opt-in e-mail, marketers should take careful measures to avoid SPAM. This section explains how to achieve this. Opt-in is the key to successful e-mail marketing. Customer choice is the watchword. Before starting an e-mail dialogue with customers, companies must ask them to provide their e-mail address and then give them the option of ‘opting into ’ further communications and selecting their communications preferences, for example the frequency of e-mail and type of content. Privacy law in many countries requires that they should proactively opt-in by checking a box (showing consent in some way). E-mail lists can also be rented where customers have opted in to receive e-mail.
44. Opt-in e-mail options for customer acquisition
45. For acquiring new visitors and customers to a site, there are three main options for e-mail marketing. From the point of view of the recipient, these are: 1 Cold e-mail campaign. In this case, the recipient receives an opt-in e-mail from an organization who has rented an e-mail list from a consumer e-mail list provider such as Experian ( www.experian.com ), Claritas ( www.claritas.com ), IPT Limited ( www.myoffers.co.uk ) or a business e-mail list provider such as Mardev ( www.mardev.com ), Corpdata ( www.corpdata. com) or trade publishers/event providers such as VNU. Although they have agreed to receive offers by e-mail, the e-mail is effectively cold. For example, a credit card provider could send a cold e-mail to a list member who is not currently their member. It is important to use some form of ‘ statement of origination ’ otherwise the message may be considered SPAM. Cold e-mails tend to have higher CPAs than other forms of online marketing, but different lists should still be evaluated.
46. Co-branded e-mail. Here, the recipient receives an e-mail with an offer from a company they have a reasonably strong affinity with. For example, the same credit card company could partner with a mobile service provider such as Vodafone and send out the offer to their customer (who has opted-in to receive e-mails from third-parties). Although this can be considered a form of cold e-mail, it is warmer since there is a stronger relationship with one of the brands and the subject line and creative will refer to both brands. Co-branded e-mails tend to be more responsive than cold e-mails to rented lists since the relationship exists and fewer offers tend to be given.
47. Opt-in e-mail options for customer retention For most organizations, e-mail marketing is most powerful for developing relationships with customers as part of e-CRM. We explore options for using e-mail marketing to build relationships with customers through Chapter 8 and specifically in Section 8.5.