FOR: Interactive Marketing Professionals

Power Your Brand Ecosystem With Social Media

by nate Elliott, June 29, 2012 key TakeaWays interactive and social Marketing Tools are as powerful as Traditional Tools TV used to dominate the marketing ecosystem, but thats no longer the case: Today, consumers in many markets spend more time online than they spend watching TV -- and they frequently trust online marketing more than offline marketing. To succeed, marketers must find new ways to use interactive and social tools alongside traditional tools. Use social To Build a Brand ecosystem That supports The Customer Life Cycle As a marketer you must support your audience at every step of the customer life cycle. When your audience is in the discovery stage, use word-of-mouth to create reach. When your customers are exploring or buying from you, use blogs and communities to offer them depth. After purchase, use public social media profiles to engage your customers.

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Vision: The Social Marketing Playbook
by Nate Elliott with Emily Riley and James McDavid

Why Read This Report You already know your audience uses social media; one minute theyre planning vacations on Twitter and the next theyre toppling governments with the help of Facebook. And because your customers use social media to engage with each other, thats probably how you think of social media too: As an engagement tool. But social media is good for much more than just engagement. In fact, social media can guide your audience all the way through the customer life cycle reaching them when theyre ready to discover your brand, offering them depth when theyre exploring your offerings and buying from you, and then engaging them after the purchase. This report outlines Forresters vision for how interactive marketers should use social marketing. It will show you how to master the next wave of social one that makes every part of your brand ecosystem more successful.

Table Of Contents
2 The Old Model Of Marketing Must Change 4 You Must Use Interactive Channels To Support The Customer Life Cycle Use Social Media To Power Every Layer Of Your Brand Ecosystem The Best Brand Ecosystems Use Social Media For Depth, Reach, And Engagement
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Notes & Resources

Forrester interviewed 9 vendor and user companies, including Bourne, Diageo, iCrossing, Isobar, SapientNitro, and We Are Social.

Related Research Documents

Global Social Media Adoption June 27, 2012 Social Media Metrics That Matter June 26, 2012 Customize Your Interactive Brand Ecosystem October 26, 2011

13 Let Data Show You How To Build A SocialPowered Ecosystem

2012, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To purchase reprints of this document, please email clientsupport@forrester.com. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.

For Interactive Marketing Professionals

Power Your Brand Ecosystem With Social Media

the old model of marketing must change Its been nearly two decades since the Web was created, and in that time the way companies do business has been turned upside down including how they sell content and physical goods, how they deliver customer service, and even how they develop new products. But how companies build brands and execute marketing programs hasnt changed much at all. Most marketers still create 30-second TV spots first and then try to coordinate their radio, print, and online campaigns to match (see Figure 1). When TV offered far greater reach than any other media channel, this system made sense. But the old marketing model has started to wobble because:

TV no longer dominates media consumption. More than 80% of American adults are online
and on average those users spend as much time on the Internet as they spend watching TV. The same is true of Europeans under 55.1 And most days, the MSN home page reaches more people than any prime-time TV show.2 TVs days as the only big media channel in the branding ecosystem are over.

Consumers have outgrown 30-second brands. Before the emergence of interactive tools, the
depth of your marketing messaging was limited to snippets of TV time or a few lines of copy. Today, the Internet offers your audience instant detail. Thats why consumers tell us they go online first to learn about the brands they see advertised offline and that the Internet is their most important source of product information.3 Your customers want more depth from your brand, and they want you to use interactive tools to provide it.

The Internet is now a trusted branding channel. When we asked consumers where they first

learned about the last product they bought, they were nearly as likely to list interactive channels as traditional media (see Figure 2). And your customers believe what you tell them online more than what you tell them offline. In fact, people trust brands websites more than they trust brands TV, radio, or print advertising (see Figure 3).

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Figure 1 The Old Model Of Branding Revolves Around TV

Internet

Radio

TV

Print

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Figure 2 Interactive Channels Are Proven To Drive Brand Awareness

Thinking about your most recent purchase, where did you rst learn about this product? In a shop Traditional media Interactive media Friends and family Other 5% Base: 25,535 European adults Source: European Technographics Benchmark Survey, Q2 2010
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29% 24% 22% 13%

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Figure 3 Consumers Trust Brands Sites More Than Their Offline Advertising
How much do you trust the following sources of information? A companys website A brands website Ads in newspaper Email from a company Ads on TV Ads in magazines Direct mail Online brand sponsorships Ads on the radio A companys social network prole Ads in search engines A companys blog Online banner ads Mobile ads 6% 9% 13% 12% 12% 22% 21% 21% 21% 19% 17% 17% 27% 30%

Base: 3,975 US online adults Source: May 2010 US Interactive Marketing Online Survey
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you must use interactive channels to support the customer life cycle Interactive tools now play a critical role throughout your marketing programs. But this doesnt mean that digital channels are more important than traditional channels, or that you must shift budget from TV to online. Instead, it means you have many more marketing options to coordinate than you did just a few years ago and that you need to rethink how digital channels work alongside traditional channels to support your target audiences through the customer life cycle (see Figure 4):4

Reach channels help customers discover your brand. Your audience cant discover your brand
if theyre never exposed to it. To generate the scale of discovery most brand marketers want youll need to use both online reach channels (like banner ads and online word of mouth) and offline reach channels (like TV, print, and radio).

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Depth channels help customers explore and buy from your brand. Your audience is looking

for depth when they explore your brand: Not just standard product specifications and options, but detail on what your brand stands for and why they should trust you. Your own website offers you a greater combination of depth, control, and user trust than any other marketing channel.

Engagement channels close the loop. Post-purchase, your customers can stay engaged with
your brand in a variety of ways by downloading your mobile application, following your Twitter or Weibo account, or liking your brand on Facebook.

When you combine depth tools, engagement tools, and reach tools, youll wind up with a threelayered brand ecosystem much more complex than the old marketing model, but making much better use of the strengths of each channel (see Figure 5). Figure 4 Marketing Programs Must Guide Audiences Through The Customer Life Cycle

Reach

er cov s i D

Exp e lor

Depth

Eng age
Buy

Engagement

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Figure 5 Marketers Must Create Multilayered Brand Ecosystems

TV Online search

Mobile app

Facebook Site

Twitter

Mobile site Print

YouTube

Radio

Online display

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Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

Use Social Media To Power Every Layer Of Your Brand Ecosystem After years of experimentation, social media marketing has started to grow up. At least threequarters of online users engage with social media in nearly every market Forrester surveys and as a result, marketers are moving beyond one-off pilot programs and integrating social media throughout their marketing programs. Today, this new wave of social media is helping marketers succeed at every layer of their ecosystems:

Blogs and owned communities can add a world of depth. Facebook isnt the only place

you can use social media; your marketing website can and should be social as well. For instance, cosmetic brand Sephora built the BeautyTalk community on its site to offer customers not just expert beauty advice but also a chance to share with each other. The result? Some customers now spend literally hundreds of hours per month on Sephoras site creating a deep brand relationship that wouldnt have been possible without social media.5

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Power Your Brand Ecosystem With Social Media

Social network profiles were designed specifically for engagement. Youre simply not going to

find a marketing channel better-suited to creating engagement than your Facebook page or your Twitter account. For instance, when Dutch airline KLM offered Facebook fans a chance to put their face and an inspirational message on the side of a plane, more than 120,000 customers sent in entries and in the process their brand preference for KLM grew.6

Word-of-mouth can create enormous reach. In fact, successful viral marketing programs

often generate as much reach as paid TV and banner campaigns. For instance, electronics retailer RadioShack encouraged people to use the hashtag #UNeedANewPhone in support of a marketing campaign and when tens of thousands of people responded it generated tens of millions of impressions on Twitter.7

The Best Brand Ecosystems Use Social Media For Depth, Reach, And Engagement Its not easy to coordinate all three layers of a brand ecosystem; many interactive marketers still develop and manage their reach, depth, and engagement channels separately and too often wind up offering users disjointed messages and experiences. The best programs weve seen start with a fundamentally social idea and then use that same social concept for every layer of the ecosystem:

De Beers Drop Everything For Love. To promote its new Everlon diamond necklace, De

Beers challenged couples to prove that love was the most important thing in their lives. The heart of the brand ecosystem was a microsite that engaged users with professionally filmed videos and allowed consumers to record their own stories (see Figure 6). De Beers Facebook page reposted the best user-generated stories and allowed fans to vote on which couples should be rewarded with trips and necklaces. The brand created reach with TV and print ads, as well as bold online display buys like online video ads and site sponsorships (see Figure 7).

Smirnoff s Global Nightlife Exchange Project. To realize its brand promise creating unique

shared experiences Diageos Smirnoff brand engaged fans in a campaign to find the best of nightlife in their cities and offered them a chance to attend a party featuring the nightlife of another city (see Figure 8). In the lead-up to the parties, the brand distributed the best of debate through Twitter, and after the parties it posted videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr. An extensive reach program including TV, outdoor, and online display got the message out to tens of millions of consumers overall (see Figure 9). The one change wed have recommended is putting a community on Smirnoff s own site, rather than its Facebook page, at the heart of the ecosystem.

Marmites Marmarati. Unilevers Marmite food brand has often leveraged its polarizing flavor
in love it or hate it promotions. To launch its new extra-strength flavor, Marmite engaged its biggest fans by inviting them to join the Marmarati a fictional secret society that met both in person and on a branded microsite (see Figure 10). Marmite then distributed the experience by reposting user-generated videos onto Facebook and using Twitter to engage fans

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For Interactive Marketing Professionals

Power Your Brand Ecosystem With Social Media

in conversation about the brand and the society. The brand counted on word-of-mouth alone to drive reach and calculated that viral pass-along brought its message to millions of people (see Figure 11). Figure 6 Drop Everything For Love Collected Stories About The Power Of Love

Source: De Beers website

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Power Your Brand Ecosystem With Social Media

Figure 7 De Beers Built A Brand Ecosystem Around Its Campaign Microsite

Online display

Site

Facebook Print

TV

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Figure 8 Smirnoff Worked With Fans To Create The Global Nightlife Exchange Project

Source: Smirno Facebook page

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Figure 9 Smirnoff Developed A Rich Brand Ecosystem Around Its Big Idea
Online search

YouTube Online display

Mobile site

Facebook

TV

Flickr

Twitter

Outdoor

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Figure 10 The Marmarati Campaign Aggregated User Content And Experiences

Source: Marmarati website

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Figure 11 Marmite Should Have Used Paid Media To Round Out Its Ecosystem

Facebook

Site

Twitter

YouTube

Word of mouth

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Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

R e c o m m e n d at i o n s

let data show you how to build a social-powered ecosystem

If youre helping your customers discover, explore, buy from, and engage with your brand, youll need to understand their needs and preferences. Make sure youre encouraging the right kind of social behaviors in the right locations by:

Using a customized ecosystem map to target the right social locations. Theres a good reason

Smirnoff s branding ecosystem looks so different from De Beers; Different audiences prefer to use social in different places. Study your audience data to see where your customers engage with social tools, and use that insight to choose the right locations for social offerings at every layer of your brand ecosystem.8

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Using Social Technographics data to target the right social behaviors. A customized

ecosystem map can tell you where users engage, but youll also need Social Technographics to tell you how users engage. Does your audience prefer to post social content, comments on what others have posted, or simply consume blogs posts and user videos? Knowing the answer can make the difference between social success and failure at every layer of the ecosystem.9

Companies Interviewed For This Report Bourne Diageo iCrossing InterContinental Hotels Group Isobar supplemental material Methodology The European Technographics Benchmark Survey, Q2 2010, surveyed 25,535 respondents in the eight markets of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. This survey is based on adults ages 16 and older. Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) weighted the data by age, gender, region, education, and income to demographically represent the adult European population per country. TNS conducted the fieldwork in February, March, and April 2010 and motivated respondents with various incentives. For results based on a randomly chosen sample of this size (N=25,535), there is 95% confidence that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 1.1% of what they would be if the entire online adult population of Western Europe had been polled. This confidence interval can widen to 3.1% when the data is analyzed at a country level. The consumer topics covered include general behavior toward technology, device ownership (including brand usage of mobile phones, PCs, digital cameras, portable music devices, and printers), online buying behavior, personal finance, importance of main banks, travel, TV purchasing, interest in digital services, technology brands, preferred media sources, consumer trust, mobile phone buying behavior, mobile Internet, demographics, and Technographics segmentation Forrester fielded its May 2010 US Interactive Marketing Online Survey to 309 interactive marketing professionals. For quality assurance, panelists are required to provide contact information and answer basic questions about their firms revenue and budgets. Forrester fielded the survey in May 2010. Exact sample sizes are provided in this report on a question-by-question basis. Panels are not guaranteed to be representative of the population. Unless otherwise noted, statistical data is intended to be used for descriptive and not inferential purposes. JWT MSN SapientNitro We Are Social

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15

If youre interested in joining one of Forresters research panels, you may visit us at http://Forrester. com/Panel. Endnotes
1

Eighty-six percent of Western Europeans ages 15 to 54 are now online, and those users spend 11.9 hours per week online compared with 11.5 hours each week watching TV. Source: European Technographics Benchmark Survey, Q2 2010. comScore Media Metrix reports that in February 2011, the MSN home page reached an average of 24.8 million users per day. Nielsen tells us that in the third week of March 2011, only one TV program could top that number: American Idol drew an audience of 25.2 million during the 9 p.m. hour on March 23, 2011. On Friday a vital day for entertainment marketers MSNs home page offers much more than twice the reach of any TV program. Source: TVtracker.com (http://www.tvtracker.com/daily_ratings.php). In fact, even users in their 50s tell us the Internet is one of the media sources they trust the most for product information. See the September 27, 2010, Choosing The Right Media Mix 2010: Europe report. Still using the sales funnel to think about your relationship with your customers? Too bad. The funnel was a linear sales tool and simply cant represent the reality of a complex and ongoing customer relationship. For a better understanding of your customers and their needs, adopt the Customer Life Cycle model instead. See the October 28, 2010, Its Time To Bury The Marketing Funnel report. Sephora reports that its most engaged BeautyTalk users spend an average of 133 hours per month in the community. Source: Paul Gi, Groundswell Entry: Sephora BeautyTalk and the Traveling Sephora Box, Lithium Blog, August 3, 2011 (http://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Lithosphere-Log/Groundswell-EntrySephora-BeautyTalk-and-the-Traveling-Sephora/ba-p/29628). KLMs Tile and Inspire contest also drove hundreds of thousands of new Facebook fans and more than half a million YouTube video views. Pretty engaging stuff, eh? Source: KLM Tile & Inspire, Empowered website (http://groundswelldiscussion.com/groundswell/awards2011/detail.php?id=588). In total, the #uneedanewphone program generated 84,000 mentions on Twitter making it the top organic trend on the site and generating 65 million trend impressions. Source: Awardshow.us (http://www. awardshow.us/groundswell/holiday2010/). Building an effective brand ecosystem can be hard: Interactive marketers have dozens of social, mobile, and paid media channels to choose from and often limited resources to work with. To make the right channel and platform choices, study your target audiences use of and trust in each channel, build a customized brand ecosystem map that reflects these behaviors and preferences, and then focus your staff and budget on the channels that matter most to your audience. See the October 26, 2011, Customize Your Interactive Brand Ecosystem report. The Social Technographics Ladder tells you if your customers are Creators, Conversationalists, Critics, Collectors, Spectators, or Joiners. See the June 27, 2012, Global Social Media Adoption report.

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In addition to developing and implementing your companys digital marketing strategy and programs, you are responsible for evangelizing the value of digital marketing across your entire organization. Forresters subject-matter expertise and deep understanding of your role will help you create forward-thinking strategies; weigh opportunity against risk; justify decisions; and optimize your individual, team, and corporate performance.

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Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 19 key roles at major companies providing proprietary research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 28 years, Forrester has been making IT, marketing, and technology industry leaders successful every day. For more information, visit www.forrester.com. 73881