engaging digital

8 Bold Resolutions For Marketers In 2012

Great article from Fast Company about eight things marketers should think about this year. I was wrong two years ago and thought there would be more evolution for some of these areas.

via www.fastcompany.com

Highlights are:

1. Measure ROI

2. Take accountiblity for being a "good" company

3. Create long term partnerships

4. Aggregate quality content for and from your top customers

5. Be a publisher and building a community

6. Use social for building relationships not pushing your message

7. Drive exceptional customer service throughout your business

8. Build a mobile site

Read full article

My thoughts:

I think #3-#6 are inter-related. Quality content is the fodder to develop relationships on social platforms as well as the basis for growing a community as part as an "owned" media strategy.

Few brands will be able to do this by themselves and should create long term partnerships with media companies that have a much deeper expertise of doing this. Brands should be cautious partnering with ad networks or SEO driven partners that don't create and publish quality content themselves, as they won't know how to grow the right audience, generate quality content and leverage learnings to grow what could be a tremendous asset.

Social Marketing Funnel (...or Spiral!)

Since some marketers still need to understand ROI around familiar metrics, I am spending lots of time thinking about the right "Social Marketing Funnel." Social visionary, David Armano has pulled together some insights, and in an Armano-like brilliance created a great visualization of his "marketing spiral."

   

Messing with the traditional funnel is like treading on sacred ground.  But I don't think the "Spiral" is that far off.  Think about it:  Often times our first interaction with a brand is through a digital touch point like a site.  Maybe we heard about it from a friend or somewhere else.  We interact with it—we give it a try.  If we like it—that leads to deeper levels of engagement.  Maybe this repeats itself adding more "cycles" to the spiral.  We continue to engage.  Some of us even begin to participate.  We transition from downloading to uploading our media.  We talk about how great the experience is.  To our peers, to each other.  We become evangelists—the spiral actually expands as we engage with multiple touchpoints—not only the digital ones

via darmano.typepad.com

Since KPI's, quantification and specific values are increasingly available at each stage of the funnel (the big missing part is a solid influence/brand advocate metric, I am on a quest - What do you think the best marketing funnel is for social media?

Luxury Brands Can Leverage Social Media

I feel are some of the biggest opportunities for luxury brands to use social media:

1. 

   Live up to the promise of your brand. In luxury marketing, the brand is critical in creating an emotional attachment that goes beyond just a product or services features. If the value of your brand is built through your attention to service, such as the Ritz Carlton, then how can you use social media tools to reinforce that idea for your customers and live up to it?
2. Find your biggest fans. Most luxury brands have a steady stable of hardcore fans. Often these are the people who buy the products frequently, but it could just as likely be the enthusiastic aspirational customer who dreams of one day buying your product. Luxury automakers have known this for a long time, using tools like social networking to make sure that teenage boys continue to dream of one day buying a Ferrari, so one day when they can afford one, they might.
3. Create exclusive experiences. Exclusivity and luxury often go hand in hand. The nice thing about social media is that you have many opportunities to create things like exclusive private networks or special content that is only for customers or VIPs. The added benefit of this is that you can make those individuals feel engaged with the brand in a way that isn't open to the general public.

via rohitbhargava.typepad.com

Tomorrow I am speaking at The Social Graph Conference about how brands can use blogs in their social strategy. n checking out what some of the thought leaders are saying, I came across this great post from Rohit Bhargava. A must read!

Looking forward to hearing an amazing line up tomorrow and thanks to Scott Galloway and the team at Luxury Labs for including me.