Data Ownership - the bullet that can kill a social media strategy
What’s the big deal with companies mandating data ownership for online marketing campaigns? I understand the importance of CRM, and understand that owning data makes ongoing communication easier; but is there really any good reason to alienate potential customers? The way I see it; any marketing campaign that mandates data ownership needs to reevaluate its conversion funnel.
Example:Scenario:
Nike runs a campaign asking for users to upload photo’s of themselves wearing a pair of Nikes. The business idea is to show versatility of different Nike shoes, and show the variety of Nike shoe owners. Additionally, the users tag their photos indicating the specific model of Nike that their wearing; this allows shoe enthusiasts to communicate on care requirements, purchasing locations etc.
Nike creates an online community and requires users register to their community prior to uploading their photos or being able to communicate with other users.
Problem:
Nike wants to own the user data of all users who participate in their campaign.
Solution:
Reexamine where the conversion funnel begins. Nike could give users multiple ways to engage with the campaign without having to register. It would increase participation, and could act as the beginning of the purchasing funnel. Perhaps instead of asking for a full registration, you allow users to interact via Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or simply by entering an email address. If you have a presence on all of those social media channels, you have the opportunity to communicate with those users within a channel they’re familiar with.
2 main goals:
1. To convert to customer (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Trial)
Let’s say at the top of the conversion funnel, we require users to register. This will make it easier for us to effectively communicate with them and convert them from awareness down to trial.
However, let’s say we don’t require registration at the top of the conversion funnel. We’ll end up reaching and being able to communicate with more users than if we required registration. However, it might make personalized messaging a bit harder. This could cause lower ratio of conversions from awareness down to trial. That being said, in many cases both approaches will end up with the same NET conversions; but not requiring registration will allow us to continue communication with those users who didn’t convert. This is a benefit for 2 reasons: 1, those users might convert given enough time; and 2, those users could influence other users to convert. (i.e. I might never buy Nike shoes, but my participation in their campaign might get me to refer a friend who does buy.)
2. To increase customer spending (Recognition, Preference, Loyalty, Advocacy)
Here, we’d like to increase a users brand preference to stimulate spending. A great way to do this is by engaging with users by providing value. Let’s say we offer a series of how-to video’s to our customers, but only offer them on our own website. This is a great way to track who’s interested in them & can be tied into an eCRM program to help create even more valuable videos in the future. In fact, we can enhance our communications plan with this data and offer alerts to users who might be interested in new how-to videos. This is a great way to build brand loyalty & eventually create brand advocates.
However, lets say we offer our videos on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and other video sharing sites in addition to our own site. This could make things trickier for creating a great eCRM program, but would allow users to view and share our videos in an environment they’re already using. This has 2 benefits: 1, users have access to the communities they’ve built and belong to. This would allow our users to instantly share videos with their friends. 2, bringing value to the user (rather than having the user come to you for value) generally gets more attention. In the end the idea is to increase brand preference; making things easy for the user is a great way to achieve that goal.
The Analogy:
This is a Sheep
Lets say you have a herd of sheep you want to move to the ‘X’
One way to do this is to put some sheep food around the ‘X’ - (Some brands still have trouble figuring out what type of sheep food attracts their type of sheep)
Is it better to leave the path to the ‘X’ open?
or is it better to put a fence in the path of the sheep?
Do you really only want sheep that have the desire to jump the fence?
Let me know your thoughts @thejordanrules
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