BrainTrust Query: Five Steps to Effective Social Retailing
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt from a current article from Insight-Driven Retailing Blog.
With retailers still exploring the use of social media — or social retailing, for short — there are very few established best practices around this new type of marketing and engagement. Retailers often have to try many approaches before finding the ones that work for their brand.
Through my discussions and research, I’ve come up with five things retailers should consider:
Establish beachheads, now! Remember when brands had to pay exorbitant prices for their web addresses when the internet went mainstream? Don’t let that happen with social media sites. Reserve accounts on the sites you might be using. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are the obvious choices, but there are others popping up all the time. You should also consider whether you need to support other languages and whether you want to establish a single corporate presence, or whether you want stores to have more control.
Acquire fans and followers. Sometimes they’ll follow you just because they want to be associated with your brand, but most often they want to get something out of the relationship. This is where contests, coupons, and promotions can attract the masses. Once you’ve got their attention, you must continue to engage them with fresh content that includes sneak previews, product reviews, surveys, special events, etc.
Reward your best fans and followers. Offer them special deals, products, and badges that help them know you value them. They, in turn, will become brand advocates and help spread your message. When possible, make your rewards social. For example, put a promotion into affect only after 5000 likes, offer a discount for retweets, or award a badge for the most interesting comment.
Make shopping social. Social commerce is not about recreating your e-commerce site within a social site. Consumers will visit your website when they want to buy, but they’ll visit your social channels when they want to learn. It’s important to foster conversations about your products and services, and refer people to your website when they are ready to purchase. Similarly, you should add social features to your e-commerce site. Allow your customers to review products, make recommendations, and discover each others’ preferences.
Mine psychographic data. Consumers, especially teens, are willing to share lots of information about themselves in exchange for a more personalized experience. With their permission, you can gather psychographic data that includes their interests, activities, and opinions. This additional information helps create a more complete view of individuals so you can tailor their online and in-store experience to meet their needs.
Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions: What do think of the suggestions offered in the article for developing a social presence? Are there any you would amend or add?
There are foundational elements for developing a social presence but in order for there to be significant and sustainable impact, a social presence has to be integrated into both a broader marketing strategy as well as specific CRM strategies.
If there is one area I’d change in terms of emphasis, it is how fans and followers are “rewarded.” Using social simply as a tool for offering discounts, coupons and offers just continues what retailers are doing ad nauseum and failing with: training customers to only buy on sale. There are many more ways to engage customers and those strategies and tactics should start with the brand and content, not just offers and discounts.
For any business entering into the social space, there needs to be an objective. Think about this first — before trying a bunch of tactics.
I’ve become decreasingly enthusiastic about list and/or step propositions like this. It’s like laying out the ingredients to your beloved grandmother’s sticky buns — no matter how accurate your obedience to the instructions, your sticky buns don’t even come close. The magic and power in everything we do is in the alignment of such activities; the secret is in the spaces between.
So these are excellent ‘ingredients’ IF you are clear as to the ultimate intention of your effort and IF you focus more on how they all align and flow together.
I won’t even get started on why looking for best practices isn’t the best practice.
David’s points would build a good foundation for any retailer. I would add though that these steps are quickly becoming table-stakes. In and of itself, none of this will constitute a differentiator.
Content is really the key variable. Your content must be EXCELLENT or no one (except your mom) will care about it — it’s that simple. Make your content extremely visual and sticky. Use lots of video and graphics to tell your brand story. Spend time, effort and money to develop the best content in your category and LOTS of it. It’s the only way to break through an increasing amount of noise out there.
Also cross pollinate heavily between YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and your website. Turn all the pieces into a vortex of excitement and interest for engaged fans.
All good, common-sense points. The one thing missing here is a specific target of “what is the objective and how are we to measure progress towards that objective?” Like all technology investments, it’s easy to spend a great deal of working capital and then look back later and ask “what did we get out of this?”
It must have context.
I also think it is important to dedicate a team — even a small team — to manage your social media initiatives for the company. This will ensure a constant stream of information and dialog with the consumer. Social media is yet another way in which an operator of retail stores can empower their followers to be the eyes and ears of management.
Feargal Quinn was the founder and president of a small chain of supermarkets called Superquinn in Ireland. He is also the author of the book “Crowning the Customer.” At Superquinn he established one of the very first loyalty programs that had nothing to do with the sales program. It was all about points. After you acquired a certain number of points you got gifts or savings off your purchases. The really interesting part of his program was how you gained points. If you found a bad tomato on the produce stand and reported it to him, you got 5 points. Dirty floor, 10 points, if you wrote a letter about a great employee you got 25 points. He had every consumer working as if they were the executives of his company. He founded “social” meetings at the store for consumers to tell him how to better run the store, what products to carry, and they loved him for the opportunity, since he implemented so many of their ideas.
The social media we have today can be an updated way to crown your customers with executive powers to better the store, better the company and for sure better the brand experience.
This is an interesting article, but it misses one key question: how do you know this social stuff is actually *working*?
“Likes” don’t shop in your stores, “fans” can’t be used to pay your electricity bill, and “followers” don’t increase inventory turns. These things only matter if at the end of the day they drive actual sales in your stores (online or off).
Tying online (and now social) behavior to dollars and cents is a giant hole in most companies’ approaches to “social retailing.” The best practices in this area are only beginning to emerge, and the companies who get it wrong will be wasting huge amounts of money without even knowing it. [Full disclosure: Social Media Link just announced a partnership with my company to start to measure the in-store impact of its social influencer programs.]
So, are the steps outlined in this article the right ones to leverage social media to drive your sales? I don’t know. I say, let’s measure the impact and find out!
I think the primary focus of a social media strategy should be to “listen” not “talk.” Listen to customers and wow them with personalized attention to their comments and needs. Too many social media strategies backfire because the brand wanted “buzz” but wasn’t prepared to invest the time and effort to be a good social netizen and a good listener. Zappos is not known for its social media campaigns, it’s known to be focused on customer satisfaction, through and through. Be genuine and do listen to your customers, wherever they are.
You must first understand your customer segments by establishing a foundation of data capture and analysis. To jump into the pool without knowing how to swim or in what direction to take you are just using the social channel without direction. In time, it becomes irrelevant, unfocused and ineffective.
The number of choices available to marketers to engage in dialogue, learn from that two-way exchange, listen and observe behavior and respond when appropriate to do so requires a foundation and many companies don’t have the back-end infrastructure to leverage, learn and win in this space.
I absolutely agree that senior management should designate a subject matter expert (SME) for this space, allow time for test/learn/refinement and while the tendency is to push hard for quantification of return on investment (ROI) give it time. With a solid foundation in place on the back-end and strong analytics in place a positive ROI will result.
I loved this piece. I’d add one more — go local. There are retailers that are creating social media presences that are city-specific, which encourages customers to weigh in and get personal.
I want to underscore something that only earned a passing mention above: ratings and reviews. Customer ratings…
1. Build traffic. Reviews give your pages content more likely to be found by search engines. They give you a better presence in directories and enhanced search listings like Google Places and Yelp. They encourage return visits.
2. Increase conversion. Ratings reduce the uncertainty of buying something new. Even negative reviews make the positive ones more credible.
3. Foster loyalty. Reviews increase the engagement of those who provide them and the return purchases of those who use them.
How do you get more ratings without fakery? First, request. Ask on the site, ask on your email follow up, encourage your associates to ask shoppers. Second, reward. Offer loyalty points like Superquinn, the example from Frank Riso. Third, thank. Don’t offer a discount in return for a review, but offer a surprise incentive as a special thank you.
I think these are the basics that companies must be doing to achieve social presence. An overall objective should be to get measurable goals established because at some point, management will want an return on investment.
Going viral is not an event you can plan for, but you can set the stage by providing followers/fans with an offer unique to them, then allowing only them to spread it.
These are great … if they were truly followed. One of the great issues is how to manage and mine data of social networking while establishing their credibility and strength. Much information gathered on the Internet is dubious at best, and outright false many times. Managing this and then determining its credibility is difficult for even the best data managers.
The one thing about the rewards part, I don’t think discounts should be a primary driver because you are then just using social media as a deal promotion channel. Social media should be used for brand building and community building, and rewards like badges and highlighting high profile participants is fine, discounts should be used sparingly as a tool.
“Social media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. No one actually knows how. When finally done, there is surprise it’s not better.” – Avinash Kaushik (Google Digital Marketing Evangelist)
David is suggesting some reasonable tactics to get started, but as with most tactics the devil is in the details. For example, I’d certainly advocate establishing a beachhead (as David puts it) on social media properties, but be aware that doing so comes with a variety of new obligations. Those properties are another touchpoint for your brand, and your customers are going to (rightly) expect that they ought to be able to engage with your brand at any of your touchpoints. So I had better be able to get customer service from your tweeter account or your Facebook page. Make sure you’re prepared to provide the same level of service you do via your other touchpoints.
Another suggestion “Acquire Fans” is certainly reasonable as a means to an end. But all too often, brands use # of fans/followers as the key performance metric, which is, by itself, a worthless metric. Are 10,000 followers for a children’s clothing manufacturer good or bad? (It’s good if there are only 15,000 active parents on your social network; it’s bad if there are 1.5 billion.) What do you want those followers to do? Do you want them to create or amplify content that improves your Facebook Edge ranking and exposes your message to more consumers? Then measure that behavior (# of comments, retweets, etc.). Remember that you don’t own your pages on sites like Facebook (you are simply a digital sharecropper on Facebook’s farm), so just having followers is not helpful.
Specifically for retailers, I think the article overlooks one of the most important roles social plays which is to provide the the social proof that shoppers need in order to make purchase decisions. As an online retailer, one of your highest priories in social marketing is to generate reviews and user generated content to add credibility and distinctiveness to your digital product pages. I’d take 5 reviews for each of my store locations and product pages over 100,000 Facebook followers any day!
I know from personal experience that too much time can be spent “getting ready.” Waiting for just the right time. Doing all the research. It also can be putting off the inevitable or missing opportunities. Sometimes you just have to jump in and learn from your mistakes. In my view, developing a social presence for brands is a “jump right in” situation. In its infant stage, social media for brands is where you can get away with a few mistakes.
I think the article covers some basics, but there are at least 3 components that I would add:
Define Strategy and Objectives – Before establishing beachheads and just throwing up a series of social pages, it would behoove retailers to think through how they want social to amplify, augment or even alter their existing multi-channel strategy.
Integrate with In-Store – The most advanced retail social media strategies (see Neiman Marcus, Sephora) are now developing ways to recognize the customers online relationship with the brand while they are physically in a store. Red carpet treatment for top fans and advocates builds loyalty and encourages them to become even more engaged with you online.
Measure – Retailers should set themselves up on a leading social media monitoring platform with strong analytics. As their social strategy matures they can look at integrating social measurement with web analytics and possibly even brick and mortar CRM data.
These are solid best practices that have been introduced. However, there is a bigger item that needs to be addressed first — the development of a comprehensive omni-channel strategy. Once a strategy is created to guide customer engagement across channels, then their efforts can be more refined and focused. Lastly, when leveraging social, retailers cannot forget about the direct correlation with mobile. It is through their mobile devices that shoppers are researching, sharing and influencing other shoppers.
The numbers of “likes,” “fans,” etc., should not be a hard and fast goal line, prior to engaging the audience. An international brand that has household name recognition should not look at 5,000 social channel responses as a good number. Conversely, a small, local brand, be it a retailer or manufacturer, should engage “fans” immediately, and not necessarily offer discounts.
A great snack manufacturer brand has been taking potato chip flavor ideas from their fans for years, long before they had the “prescribed” number of fans this article suggests. They built their brand by giving their audience what they requested, and didn’t have to discount a single product.
Lots of great suggestions here.
Per some comments, having a clear objective is really important, but so too is working out how you plan to measure whether you are achieving the objective. Ultimately, data that is connected across media and shopping sources can allow you to truly know whether your best followers are fans, how important they are, who responds to what, etc.
I look forward to this time … when marketers and commentators alike can use facts and not speculation for driving best practice and business value.
As I look at the social media landscape for this year, I see two countervailing trends: increased accountability for social media expense balanced with an increased need for a presence across the different social media channels.
The recommendations above appeared to be a bit early stage. I would recommend that marketers today not only establish a beachhead on different social media platforms, but take the lead in developing measurement strategies that will permit the organization to effectively gauge the impact of these different channels on brand perception as well as direct and indirect transactional volume.
In addition, one of the most powerful ways to use social media today is for customer service. Businesses should take an active role in identifying customers who are currently or who have recently struggled with customer experience in store or afterwards, and seek to address their needs quickly and efficiently. In this way, retailers can begin to drive ROI and improve customer experience in the short term.
I’ve been following this for months now. Is this all hype by the media? Is anybody really selling anything, or making money through social media retailing?
The 5 ideas are very basic, but certainly foundational for anyone approaching this topic seriously for the first time, or in analyzing what may already be in place but not meeting expectations.
This is a long-term game that requires patience and a strict adherence to the DNA of the product or brand being “socialized.” Don’t try to be cool or techie, or fast, if you’re not. Be authentic and most importantly make sure you have people maniacally focused on the places you are present on line to interact with and respond to the people who decide to follow you.