teachthe4ps.com » Social media

On B2B Social Media

Joe Cannon — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:15:49 +0000

Here at Teach the 4 Ps we are always looking for good B2B stories — and they can be hard to find. We have reported before on B2B and social media — but admittedly not too often. Yet there is growing evidence that B2B marketers are big users of social media. This post at the Hubspot Blog, “9 Common and Costly B2B Social Media Marketing Mistakes” (January 17, 2012) provides some guidelines you might want to offers your students. Hubspot is part of Inbound Marketing, a consulting firm that has impressed me with their book of the same name and from a talk I saw by Brian Halligan. I highly recommend the book.

You might find this article useful when you discuss marketing strategy, B2B, or social media in promotion.

How does an ad agency promote itself?

Joe Cannon — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:57:56 +0000

I guess this campaign is more than a year old now — but it is fresh and new to me. John St is an agency based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is hard to call any agency an “ad” agency as most — like John St do all kinds of promotional efforts. The clever video below demonstrates a wide range of its services in a cute way. It actually fits as a B2B and B2C example at the same time — and it also demonstrates integrated marketing communications. Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Technology and B2B

Joe Cannon — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:47:10 +0000

The impact of technology on B2B selling has probably been less dramatic than what we have seen in B2C markets. That may be because B2B has traditionally relied more on personal selling than B2C. But B2B marketers are looking for ways to sell more efficiently. This article at Mashable “8 Ways Digital Will Improve B2B Sales in 2012” (December 30, 2012) offers some ideas about specific trends.

We All Know It is Becoming an Increasingly Social World: comScore Shows Us Exactly How

Joe Cannon — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 21:56:19 +0000

Internet marketing research firm, comScore, has just published a new white paper, “It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed” (December 21, 2011). The report is a free download, although you need to surrender some personal data (name and contact info) to get access. The research cited in the report really shows how prominent social networking has become in the online experience — all across the globe: “Social networking is the most popular online activity worldwide accounting for nearly 1 in every 5 minutes spent online in October 2011, and reaches 82 percent of the world’s Internet population, representing 1.2 billion users around the globe.”

I have copied a couple of charts from the report below. The first shows that usage is high (basically 80-85%) across all age groups — and growing. The second chart shows the average number of hours per month per visitor. Download the report for more information.

Revitalizing a Mature Product: The Case of Philly Cream Cheese

Joe Cannon — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:12:17 +0000

This article, “Philly Cream Cheese’s Spreading Appeal” (Bloomberg Businessweek, December 12, 2011) is a great example that has many classroom uses. Sometimes I like to describe an extended case study — to help students integrate the marketing strategy planning process — this article is that type of example. Sales of Philadephia brand cream cheese were pretty much flat (mature or decline stage of the product life cycle) for most of the last decade. Then Kraft researchers (market research) noticed that heavy users of the product were using cream cheese as an ingredient in their cooking — not simply as a spread for bagels. Starting in Europe back in 2008, Kraft’s brand managers tapped into social media and the Internet to gather and share recipes using Philadephia brand cream cheese, they promoted it on cooking shows and with contests (Promotion). In the U.K. the share of customers using cream cheese as an ingredient (effective repositioning) has almost doubled to 37% — and sales are up 20% in Europe (data – it is nice to show case studies in class with real results). All of this in a mature product category. What a great example of how to revitalize a brand. Check out the article for more details on the strategy. Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

McKinsey Study Tracks Web 2.0 Tools and Applications Over Time

Joe Cannon — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:17:16 +0000

McKinsey’s Business Technology Office has been tracking business use of Web2.0 technologies (blogs, podcasts, social networks, wikis, RSS, etc.) for the last few years. Their most recent survey results are posted with a neat interactive feature in “Business and Web 2.0: An interactive feature” (McKinsey Quarterly, November 2011). To see the whole article you will have to register at the site, but let me share some highlights related to marketing (there are lots of non-marketing related findings).

Top 3 tools companies use in “acquiring customers” in 2011: 1) social networking (69%), blogs (39%), and video sharing (26%)
Top 3 tools companies use in “developing products” in 2011: 1) social networking (61%), blogs (35%), and microblogging (15%)
Top 3 tools companies use in “gathering insights” in 2011: 1) social networking (69%), blogs (36%), and microblogging (20%)
Top 3 benefits from customer use of Web 2.0 technologies: 1) increasing effectiveness of marketing (65% of companies reported benefits), 2) increasing customer satisfaction (44%), and 3) reducing marketing costs (41%).

Other trends include rapid growth of social networking — blogs were the leader in many categories just three years ago — now everyone is using social networks. Marketing is the functional area making the greatest use of Web 2.0 tools.

Stop Advertising to Help Your Business

Joe Cannon — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:33:36 +0000

This ABC News clip interviews Aaron Shapiro whose new book Users Not Customers tells businesses to stop advertising. I have not read the book and feel we must be cautious expecting that all businesses can use Google and Facebook as models. Online firms like these have a unique cost structure that plays some role here. Still, I think Shapiro has some interesting ideas. You might consider watching the video to get some ideas about emerging marketing practices or perhaps show it in class with some discussion. Perhaps asking whether all firms should follow this advice and eliminate advertising and, if not, where this type of strategy would be most/least effective. We have posted it at Learn the 4 Ps.

video platform video management video solutions video player

Facebook – Big Brands Like its Reach and Its Cost

Joe Cannon — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:41:50 +0000

This Wall Street Journal article/video combination is really two stories. One is the remarkable success of Doug, Ford’s spokespuppet. Doug’s YouTube channel has more than 3 million upload views.

On the other hand, focus of the article, “Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like Paying,” (November 2, 2011, non-subscribers may need to click here) describes a business model challenge for Facebook. The company’s $70 billion market value is based on the idea that the social network giant will produce revenues and profits — largely from selling targeted ads on the site. Big brands love the eyeballs their Facebook fan pages attract, but those pages cost little to produce and generate no revenue for Facebook. And many firms, like Ford, are spending for other media — in part to drive customers to Facebook. While Americans spend 15% of their online time on Facebook, the social network giant only attracts 6.4% of all online advertising. The video below interviews with the author of the WSJ article.

The article has insights for teaching about advertising, media selection, and social media.

A Deep Understanding of Customers Drives Marketing at a Unique Stockholm Hotel

Joe Cannon — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 16:54:37 +0000

I love this recent story that David Meerman Scott tells over at his Web Ink Now blog. The post, “Persona based content marketing at the Nobis Hotel,” describes how this Stockholm hotel uses a deep understanding of its target customers (Scott calls them “buyer personas” — we call them target customers) to create a unique travel experience. I love how the marketing manager uses customer reviews at TripAdvisor to understand how customers talk about the hotel — and then reflects those same words back in its advertising and search engine optimization. Scott tells the story well — so jump over to his blog and read more. For marketing instructors, I think it provides an excellent example of customer behavior, market research, positioning, and social media.

“Hidden Camera” Ad Backfires on ConAgra

Joe Cannon — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:32:10 +0000

Marketing managers at ConAgra Foods thought they had a great take on the old “hidden camera” ad. They invited food bloggers and mommy bloggers to dinner in New York City where they would hear a talk by a well-known food expert hosted by a famous chef. They would also enjoy a four course Italian meal. Who could refuse? Of course the guests didn’t know that the lasagna they were being served was Marie Callendar’s Three Meat and Four Cheese, a frozen line from ConAgra foods. ConAgra managers hoped that guests, being filmed on hidden camera, would rave about the meal and appreciate finding out they were tricked and eating a frozen lasagna. Many did not appreciate being duped — and blogged (and not too kindly) about it. The whole thing turned into a nightmare for ConAgra. You can read about the whole thing here at “Bloggers Don’t Follow the Script, to ConAgra’s Chagrin” (New York Times, September 6, 2011).

Sometimes students like to hear about marketing mistakes — and this one works. It might be interesting to tell students about the idea — and ask if they like the plan and would have any suggestions to improve it. Then lay out the “what happened.”