How Do You Keep Mass Influencers Engaged? An Example from TripAdvisor

[By Augie Ray]

In the Forrester report, Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid, we introduced the Mass Influencer, a category of online influencer comprised of people who create most of the peer impressions about about brands in social channels.  Although just 16 percent of the online population, Mass Influencers create 80 percent of all peer impressions about products and services.

Engaging Mass Influencers is tough–getting a sufficient number of bloggers or Twitterers to mention your new product or participate in your promotion is challenge enough–but keeping them engaged is tougher.  In the middle of last year Moonfruit, a free web site builder, ran a Twitter sweepstakes that got many tweeting.  Some found the program spammy, but it was undeniable Moonfruit earned a lot of attention.  The site received a huge spike of traffic, but the volume of Unique Visitors has since returned to exactly the same level as before.  The promotion was successful in reaching many but did not succeed in creating lasting engagement.

One way Mass Influencers can create peer impressions for a brand is to post ratings and reviews, but there isn’t much of a feedback loop to this activity. Are people reading my reviews?  Do they find them worthwhile?   

TripAdvisor needs to keep reviewers reviewing, and an email message they sent to me suggests one way to do so. They don’t merely ask for more reviews but instead appeal to some of the motivations that Mass Influencers have for their social media activities.  The TripAdvisor message takes away doubt about readership of reviews and implies that those who post reviews have an audience eager for more content.  Here is what I received: 

 

Do I believe I have an audience waiting to read my next hotel review?  Of course not, but this email still motivated me to write a review of another property in which I stayed this past week.  TripAdvisor’s email message confirmed my content is relevant to and read by others, and this acted as encouragement for me to post more content (which, in turn, drives page views, return visits, and revenue for TripAdvisor.com).

TripAdvisor cannot succeed in being a content and opinion destination if reviewers only post a review or two and then never return. Their simple email program suggests one way that feedback can be used to keep influencers influencing.

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• Three Reasons Not to Use Influencer Engagement (socialmediatoday.com)
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B2B Interactive Marketing Spending To Hit $4.8 Billion by 2014

by Michael Greene

Forrester’s five year forecast of B2B interactive marketing spending has gone live on the Forrester site. This report marks the beginning of a chain of research for interactive marketing professionals at B2B companies. It should be no surprise that B2B interactive marketing spending continues to grow – and quickly at that. We project B2B interactive marketing spending to hit $4.8 billion in 2014, over double an estimated $2.3 billion in 2009. That’s no number to sneeze at, but what impresses me most is that historically conservative B2B marketers are not only investing in interactive marketing, but actually shifting budget towards online channels. While all marketers need to adjust marketing plans to suit their unique marketing goals and purchaser behavior, I think our forecast reflects a few universal truths for B2B marketers:

·         Accountability reigns supreme. Even more than their B2C counterparts, B2B interactive marketers are highly focused on channels that deliver tangible business results. Search marketing has been an obvious beneficiary here and we expect B2B marketers to continue focusing on delivering quality leads through their interactive marketing efforts.

·         But digital isn’t just for sourcing leads anymore. Paid search is still the top interactive line item for B2B marketers, but display, mobile, and social marketing are all growing quickly. As B2B marketers gain experience with interactive marketing, they are beginning to stretch outside of their comfort zone and turn to channels that can spark brand interest and help educate potential customers.

·         B2B marketers can’t ignore social media. Consumer-focused marketers have been relatively fast out of the gate in adopting social marketing, but I believe that it’s B2B marketers who will ultimately gain the most from social technologies. B2B marketers have always understood the need to develop deeper relationships with customers, and while traditional sales and client service operations aren’t going to disappear, social media has emerged as key platform for informing decision makers during the sales process and engaging and supporting existing clients.

Stay tuned for more research on B2B interactive marketing. Until then, how do you see B2B interactive marketing evolving over the next 12 months? What research would you like to see? Let me know in the comments below.

Adobe On Its Way To Being A Role Model For Interactive Marketers

 

I just had a one on one with Adobe CMO, Ann Lewnes, a power house of interactive marketing energy for the combined Adobe/Omniture companies.

In her words, "Adobe's goal is to be the site role model of what the combined Adobe/Omniture suite of products can bring to any marketer's site."

Her plan is to market how products from the combined firms can help designers and marketers track customer engagement with content at the content level, not campaign or page level.  And she is going to do this by improving upon Adobe's existing Website design best practices.  New site development of Adobe.com will actually center around a modular creation approach — perfect for the Splinternet – which will allow Adobe to test performance of different parts of the site and constantly iterate in order to improve performance and customize the site to customer profiles.

And what online efforts does Adobe has planned beyond its site? Ann cites a staggerring 74% of Adobe's marketing dollars go toward digital media.  Let me say that again: 74% of Adobe's marketing dollars go toward digital media. Most goes toward email and search — the best drivers of immediate sales.  But a reasonable amount also goes toward display and social media engagement.

As a fellow champion of interactive, I loved hearing Ann say that B2B marketers can't afford not to be aggressively investing in online.  But I loved another point she made even more: Don't sacrifice long term brand engagement in the name of short term revenue results.  (This actually sounds like the perspective I also got recently from another silicon valley power CMO, Elisa Steele). I've found many marketers sacrificed brand investments during the recession to invest more in driving direct sales.  

But I agree with Ann.  This trend is an eventual detriment to your business. And I look forward to hearing that more CMOs are following Adobe (and Yahoo!'s) example to invest in engaging users with their brand on and offline.

Is mobile really *that* big a deal?

**Correction: Actually, we forecast that direct mail will be at about $67 billion by 2012.  So to my comment below, the astronomical forecast of mobile at $20 billion would be closer to a third, not a half of dm spend by 2012.

 

Live from the Omniture Summit: The New Principles of A Successful CMO

 

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