Social Media Insights at the Conclusion of Oracle Open World
Open world wrapped up yesterday with a keynote delivered in part by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. I covered the show via podcast and have a number of interesting podcast programs in production, to be released next week. My mission was to uncover what is working and what is not working in social media and to highlight social media offerings in prepackaged enterprise software. As the head of MobileCast Media, I am always asking other business leaders 1. if they are seeing signs of recovery 2. what is working right now for winning new business. We won’t deal with the economic questions here but I want to know what is working in marketing not only so I can not only fine tune my company’s own service offerings, but also best practices so that we can win some of our own new customers. You might gain some insights for your company by listening in.
As far as media is concerned, I’m not only interested in new/social media, but am interested in traditional media as well. Successful companies use a mix of media and I don’t advocate abandoning traditional. Change is hitting us so rapidly, not only the changes in how consumers are spending their time (Facebook, Twitter) but the economic downturn has also changed business and consumer buying behavior.
This is what I’m hearing. For B2B, what is not working very well for generating new business is cold calling. Better for sales reps to position themselves/their company as experts (perhaps with a blog, podcast, YouTube channel, or reprinted article) and send your prospects your thought leadership materials to warm them up, then call them or better yet, meet them in person. Conferences are expensive, but nothing beats face-to-face. Direct mail, if done right, seems to be an effective part of the mix. Hitting prospects with different media is important, the more types of media, the better.
Oracle has some interesting Social CRM offerings. I have found that tools deployed behind the firewall can have as much impact as those outside the firewall. In this case, the Social CRM product allows sales reps to collaborate on, rank, and refine sales materials to help each other win new business. One example is deciding which email template to use, I call it a “pitch letter,” to get response from prospects in email marketing (for example if you are inviting prospects to a webinar). Having first hand experience with this, if your pitch letter is not spot-on-target you are going to annoy your prospects and get a lot of unsubscribes. Using the right verbiage is a trial and-error-process and Oracle Social CRM helps short-cut this so each sales rep doesn’t make the same mistake.
Among practices that are working, I found a few threads. One is capturing the spirit of a physical event and publishing in new media and social media channels. I interviewed the VP of Marketing at SalesForce.com regarding their prepackaged offerings and afterwards he told me how successful their online videos have been. Salesforce.com captures the excitement of their customers at user conferences and makes short high-quality videos which are then published on their web site and on YouTube. The VP of Marketing pointed me to their in-house video producer who told me all about how they produce their videos. Very interesting how they do it – podcast coming. Infomercials are currently working well in TV advertising and I believe this is because they contain customer testimonials. In my opinion, nothing is more powerful. Salesforce.com is using customer testimonials to perpetuate their momentum and has fed a cult-like following among their customers (attend one of their user meetings to witness for yourself).
Another thread is that it is much easier to get new business from your existing customers and this is where Salesforce.com’s prepackaged offering comes in. If your customers are satisfied, you will be able to cross sell and up sell, not only for B2B (business to business), but B2C (business to consumer). Salesforce can pull in complains from Twitter or Facebook (e.g. a fan page), open a customer service ticket then post a solution to the same medium. It seemed like a good idea to me, however, one person I talked to said it seemed a “big brother” for a corporation to be responding so efficiently on such forums. I don’t have a problem with it, but it highlights an issue for companies to be aware of. The reality is, as integration increases, more of what we publish can be seen by everybody, even the person or entity you are complaining about. Privacy is a growing issue and as audio and video integrates (and recording proliferates) life will be much different in the next 10 years.
I talked to the President of Salesgenie.com who gave me a good perspective on how the typical company is viewing social media and he shared some great insights on what is and isn’t working in their own marketing mix. I also talked to the person who is heading up Oracle’s Twitter and Facebook initiatives. A fantastic interview with some surprising conclusions – guess which is working better for Oracle: Twitter or Facebook? He also had some tips for success with these media including media policy and publishing strategy.
I have heard a lot of buzz about social media, now I want to hear about real companies who are finding success with it. Let me know if you have a story (my first name at mobilecastmedia dot com). Listen to the podcast next week – check back here for the links.