Customer Experience Crossroads

The social media paradox: you can put carpet on You Tube, but it will keep you busy

This is the third of a three-part interview with Christine Whittemore, creator of Flooring the Consumer, a trade blog in the carpet industry, and Carpetology, a consumer focused blog on everything carpet. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

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Pushing further into social networks

As Ms. Whittemore has continued to learn more about the social media environment, she and her colleagues have reached into new areas.

In 2007, and again in 2008, she participated in writing the Age of Conversation, a collaborative book created with bloggers around the world. Each author contributed a chapter, and the book proceeds have been donated to the children’s charity Variety.

Being involved in that project was what led Ms. Whittemore into other online sharing tools, including Facebook and Twitter. “We had a reason to experiment with some of these tools to figure out whether they make sense and how to use them.  I’m in admiration over Wiggly Wigglers (here on Facebook) and The Engaging Brand (here on Facebook) and how they use Facebook to nurture their community and business.”

She has now started experimenting with Facebook for Wear-Dated, and has a video series called A Foot’s Perspective on YouTube. True to form, both these properties are cross-linked and linked to the Carpetology Blog. There are Flickr sets for Wear-Dated, Solutia’s brand of carpet fiber. “These are long term projects that allow me to keep on learning and experimenting.”

Ms. Whittemore also describes herself -- accurately -- as an "enthusiastic participant" in the Bathroom Blogfest, an annual event that I was involved in instigating that created many opportunities for additional blog profile through cross-linking.

The "social media paradox"

When asked about key learning and missteps, Ms. Whittemore says, "The biggest misstep is not experimenting and trying these tools.  They are efficient and powerful and here to stay.  So, not becoming familiar with them puts you at a disadvantage."

Unfortunately, as many new media practitioners know, time pressures often expand with involvement in social networks, something she calls "The social media paradox".

"My biggest frustration is not having enough time.  I bet you are familiar with what I term the social media paradox: you get involved because you have a bit of extra time.  Before you know it, the social media project has snowballed and taken on a life of its own. 

"You develop a community.  You must nurture it, but that leaves less time to be looking outward at what others contribute to the conversation, and keep up with other new developments." 

The challenge becomes to "still be aware of what’s going on outside your immediate circle". If you don't maintain this connection between the online and offline worlds, she believes you become "too insular".

Another key area of learning has been in keyword placement and search engine ranking. "I knew nothing about SEO when I started out.  As my writing has improved, I’m developing more sensitivity for how to position ideas and keywords for greater benefit.  The Carpetology Blog has helped tremendously as all postings have some relationship to carpet."

She still wishes she had more time for formal training in online copywriting principles and SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as well as Google Analytics and other tools. All in service to meet the goals of the entire exercise: "understand what matters to web visitors".

Trends: social media is growing, and the consumer is in charge

Ms. Whittemore believes that blogs and other social media tools are becoming more accepted, even in traditional industries. "I’m seeing more exploration taking place with LinkedIn groups forming", she notes, and "Corporations are getting increasingly involved in social media which means that acceptance is growing."

What isn’t changing is that the consumer is in charge and begins research at a web browser.  "The only way to be discovered is by participating in the online conversation and creating content that is authentic, trustworthy, relevant and valuable. And that will only become more true going forward."

Christine Whittemore is certainly one of the people actually driving change in traditional industries. I have no doubt that Solutia's competitors are wondering how to catch up to this two year lead in online conversational presence. They could take a lesson from her, and just get started.

The development of these online properties certainly shows the potential impact available from new media involvement for any industry, no matter how traditional, or even low-engagement the category might seem.

Using social media: focus on the message, and bridge new and old

I've been very interested in marketer and author Christine Whittemore's approach to social media in the carpet industry, a space not necessarily well known for innovative marketing. She graciously agreed to answer some questions about the  two business blogs she is now responsible for. In this second article in the series, (read the first one here), we'll focus on how she keeps the target audience engaged, and metrics for success.

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Focus on the message and bridge the new and the old

Ms. Whittemore believes that the relative ease of using social media tools -- versus traditional marketing communications -- allows the marketer to “focus on your message from the beginning", rather than the mechanics of delivery. But there are no quick results.

“Regardless of your industry, you still have to start from scratch to build your credibility, reputation, trustworthiness and your voice - one post at a time. And, then, you have to find ways to cross-merchandise your posts by bridging new and old forms of communication.”  Among the methods Ms. Whittemore uses to do this cross-merchandising: sending out press releases about the blog, mentioning it at presentations, and listing the blog address on a business card to hand out.

Marketers need to be prepared for ongoing learning. “I’ve heard it said that there’s no such thing as a social media expert because we are constantly learning and figuring out new approaches to what we are doing", she says."It takes time to internalize what works, and it’s easy to miss the obvious.”

As an observer, I can see a very consistent and significant effort to cross-link to previously published posts, and to engage other bloggers with comments, shout-outs and links to related content. It's an impressive effort, and really highlights that this sort of initiative requires real resourcing and time commitment if it is going to work.

The personal rewards: clear thinking and disciplined process

When people ask me about my own blogging experience, one of the things I always tell them is that my writing has improved enormously. This is Ms. Whittemore's view as well.

"Becoming successful in this environment has definitely been a stretch." She is now responsible for 3 blogs (Flooring the Consumer -- the trade blog, Carpetology -- the consumer blog, and a personal blog about her community -- The Smokerise Blog).

She publishes two to three times a week on the business blogs, in addition to writing trade articles, press releases, website updates and presentations. “Although I enjoy the written word, I never considered myself a writer.  I do now!” 

She finds the glut of information a marketer needs to deal now with a challenge to process, and hopes that the writing discipline will help with that. “I’m hoping that it will also force me to process information more quickly as it’s hard to keep up with and share the wisdom that is available.”

Engage your target audience with relevant stories

Ms. Whittemore has found that ideas, stories and examples need to be very relevant to the audience, and not too abstract. The blog needs to communicate with passion and relate to the retail experience, whether it’s in flooring or not.

While this sounds simple enough, a quick read of her blogs shows the effort that goes into this. For example, the January 12 Flooring story was about holiday store windows, and links to three other articles about store windows, complete with images, and highlights the web sites of some of the most interesting ones, such as ABC Carpet and Home, and Bergdorf Goodman. Like all the articles in this blog, there is a highly personal tone -- she explains why she doesn't have more of her own pictures of windows due to family commitments over the holidays -- and a veritable link-fest of connections to relevant content, pictures and even embedded videos.

An example of the consumer oriented content is shown in the image above, taken from the December 12 post on Carpetology. The carpet-buying sheet is a consumer-oriented one page sheet that outlines useful tips for buyers, such as keeping a sample of the installed carpet to support warranty claims. This is the sort of material that is usually buried deep inside the corporate website, and probably doesn't reach nearly as many people as it might located inside social media. The blog posting goes on to talk about how all vacuums are not the same -- "beware the beater bar!" Practical, relevant advice.

Ms. Whittemore believes the challenge now is to find ways to connect online and offline effectively. “There’s so much rich and relevant content available online that all can and should benefit from. It’s up to us as marketers to figure out how to engage those offline conversations … and make it part of the rich online discussion.  Otherwise, we’re just talking amongst ourselves.”

This theme is the topic of a new social media initiative called Bridging Old/New, “that I hope you will participate in.” [Yikes!]

Measurement and impact: tie it to the business objectives

Many bloggers are free agents of some sort, and pretty much in control of where they spend their time. We may want results, but no one is looking over our shoulder and asking the question. An employee spending this kind of time on social media is going to have to justify it for at least one stakeholder. I was curious how Ms. Whittemore is doing that.

“The beauty of this digital medium” she said, “is that there are all kinds of measures available: visitors, pageviews, subscribers, bounce rate, time on page, comments, and more.” It all depends on the purpose of the blog. Which is why her measures vary across the blogs.This is truly one of the smartest things I have yet heard spoken on the topic of social media measurement: to have objectives, and link your measurement to the objectives.

“For Flooring The Consumer, I monitor subscribers over time, comments both online and offline (I get many offline or email comments), and whether posts lead to other conversations.

“For the Carpetology Blog, I monitor overall traffic and which terms visitors have searched on, whether they have come from or go to the Wear-Dated website (http://weardated.com), and key word rankings. 

“And then, I look to see whether traffic I refer to the website is better qualified and stays longer than traffic coming from other sources. The Carpetology Blog was launched at the end of December 2007; and we redesigned the WearDated.com website on June 1, 2008.  Although it’s still early, it’s exciting to be noticing improved results!”

External recognition is always nice, though, so Carpetology was submitted to the Forrester 2008 Groundswell Awards. The submission required quantification of the value of the blog, which Ms. Whittemore kindly shared with all of her readers in a post on the Flooring site. Note that the application was for the consumer site, but the sharing was on the trade site, a neat trick that continues to support the advocacy mission with retailers. Ms. Whittemore reports that that particular article generated some great feedback from readers. The site now also has a very short pop-up survey to gather feedback from readers. Few angles are missed here.

Focus on value for audience, not measures

Despite having a good measurement strategy for her own initiatives, Ms. Whittemore cautions that measures are built over time, and there are no quick fixes. “You will NOT see sustainable radical day to day changes across any of these measures.  For improvement, you will need to show up day after day and produce authentic, relevant and valuable content. So, don’t fixate on the measures; better to focus on your audience and how to create value for them.”

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The third and final article in this interview series will be about the lessons learned from this work, and Ms.Whittemore's view of trends.

Using social media in a traditional industry: Flooring the Consumer Blog

A lot of businesses still struggle with how to use social media effectively to communicate with their end consumers. They don’t see their company or their industry as high tech, or sexy, or particularly cutting edge – in short, they just don’t see the fit of social media for their situation. Manufacturers and wholesalers of consumer durables might well consider themselves in this situation. Take carpeting for instance. I can't remember when I have seen this industry featured in a marketing magazine.

This is why I have been fascinated with the success Christine Whittemore of Solutia has had with her personal business blog, Flooring the Consumer, and have been keen to ask her a few questions.

Ms. Whittemore agrees the carpet marketing environment is traditional. “It’s not high-tech, and not promoted as high-touch – even though carpet engages the senses more than many home products.” Far from being cutting edge in retailing or marketing, price is often a more dominant feature than fashion or design in messaging.

So carpeting is a market few would see as ripe territory for new media.Stay tuned as we find out more about bringing social media to the marketing of a carpet manufacturer.

Seriously good statistics

Flooring the Consumer was launched in June 2006, and is now ranked as #108 on the Ad Age top marketing blogs, and has over 800 subscribers. These are seriously good statistics for a blog of this type.

More importantly, as you'll see in the coming posts, the blog is achieving business results. Ms. Whittemore is the Director for In-Store Innovation for the Wear-Dated carpet fiber division of Solutia, a $3.8 Billion company with 6000 employees. The company manufactures nylon fibers that go into residential carpet. Her work involves training, presentations, and thought leadership at retail for the flooring industry.

Below, authors of the Carpetology blog. The same team "elf themselves" at the Office Max site.

Born out of frustration with traditional marketing

The blog was born out of Ms. Whittemore’s frustration with traditional marketing to achieve her business objectives. “I had been flirting with the notion of a blog -- actively for 9 months prior to taking that step -- because I was so frustrated with traditional marketing, had things to share with my audience of flooring retailers and retail salespeople, and couldn’t get published fast enough and frequently enough by the trade press.”

In addition to this challenge, there was minimal budget for a traditional newsletter, and she felt these had become “inefficient” as a communication tool in any event.

After attending a Columbia Business School conference on marketing innovation, Ms. Whittemore says she realized “most of the people in the room not only blogged, but were also cutting edge marketers…  and true innovators.” She took her content ideas and her sense of urgency to work, and the blog was born.

About consumers and retailing, not just carpeting

There are now three blogs as well as a Twitter feed, and Facebook activity. The blogs each have a distinct audience. Flooring the Consumer is targeted to the trade, and addresses topics such as marketing to women, the retail experience and consumers in general.

Carpetology, launched in December 2007, is a consumer blog about all things carpet.

The third blog, The Smoke Rise Blog, is a community-oriented, more personal blog.

While the consumers are online, not all the retailers are. There are retailers keen to reinvent the experience, however, and these are the ones that Flooring the Consumer reaches, and that keep the author motivated.

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Next up: how to keep people engaged with relevant content, and how to measure success.

Happy New Year: Guess what, you are already behind, and taxes will be due soon

I haven't even finished my plan for the year, and I can see I am already behind. There's no hope of billing enough in January to meet my goal for this month. So I'll need to double up somewhere else, or just accept the fact that I set the target too high.

Meanwhile, everyone else wants money and the forms are just starting to roll in.

Every association I belong to wants me to send in my membership renewal. The subscription reminders are going to start showing up any day now. And tax filing in all its glory is just around the corner.

If you have SOHO or SME customers, I suspect they are in the same mood. They have the January grumbles.

I got the GST filing form yesterday. And thank goodness, because it didn't turn up last year, which became a real hassle. [I tried to netfile, but you can't netfile without the form, don't ask me why.] There are four pages in this packet, printed on both sides. I've been trying to find the filing deadline.
I've just finished scouring the darn thing yet again, hoping to avoid another frustrating visit to the CRA web site. Because being late is so expensive, I am starting to get twitchy and paranoid about the whole thing. I think that's exactly where they want me: twitchy, confused and paranoid.

No matter how much the government claims to be making the process simpler, business taxes are a mine-field. There's pointy things with trip-wires just waiting for you. I know a lot of smart business people, people with a lot of education, people who can cope with tremendously complex issues, people who can run big stuff and run it well. And invariably we get snagged on some tax issue when we are running our own virtual organization.

These snags usually cost thousands of dollars to fix. I heard about another one just recently, a tale of woe from an honest guy, someone I respect and trust, who inadvertently screwed something up and is now in the glue big time.

I was thinking about this when I spoke to my insurance company a few days ago. My spouse usually handles the car insurance. But he can't anymore because of privacy rules. The renewal letter clearly states that only the named insured can talk to them. It's a lot like talking to the tax man.

They seem friendly enough, but they're always fishing around, just like some kind of tax auditor. "By the way, do you use the car to commute to work?" "No, I work from home." "Really, that's interesting," he says,"what kind of work can you do from home?" "Marketing research," I say. "Consulting. That kind of thing." Where has this guy been living, I wonder? "Oh, so you have clients coming in to your home then?" he asks, with a gotcha sound to his voice. "No, my clients do not meet me in my home," I have to repeat several times before we have to revisit the commuting thing. Then he starts in on business equipment in the house. I am finally able to shut that down by telling him I have business insurance from another company. Gotcha, I think to myself.

Sadly, you can never call gotcha on the government because there is no alternative supplier of taxation services.

In the private sector, you can't make a dime without improving your productivity every year. Customer and consumer expectations are high and rising for all of us. Every time I hear an exhortation from the public sector about how we need to raise our productivity, I think about the time and effort spent dealing with the public sector.

OK, rant over. We now resume our regular programming.   

Resources:
Another wonderful film in the Prelinger Archive provided the stills for this post: Despotism, made in 1946.

Research Incentives: How Much Is An Opinion Worth

I-Tracks, an online research organization, published some helpful tips about research incentives in their newsletter, available at this link:  Press Room :: Newsletter :: Article Archive :: Itracks.

Face-to-face focus groups are more well established, and a good recruiter can usually provide some guidance as to the current going rate.  Online is still emerging, and frequently the participants don't know what they are getting into. 

Author Lisa Lowe suggests the following as a starting point for online projects ($USD)

Online Focus Groups:

• $50 to $75 for general consumers
• $100 to $150 for professionals

Bulletin Board Focus Groups:

• $15/day for general consumers
• $25 to $50/day for professionals

With professionals, the amounts are really an acknowledgement of their time, and that you value their contribution.  Of course in some instances, notably executives, they are unlikely to be able to accept a cash incentive, and you need to be more creative wtih your recognition.

Another variable is how much time you ask them to commit to the project.  Typically Bulletin Boards run over three days, with respondents asked to commit a certain amount of time each day.  B2B projects often generate very detailed responses, and respondents will often take the time to read all the comments.  This is great, of course, but it does add to the time they are spending. 

Lisa makes another good point about sending out incentives quickly. Delays don't help the cause of research one bit.  And if the sponsor is known to the participants, then it just makes the company look cheap or disorganized.  The 30 day accounts payable standard does not apply here.  Ten days is the practical limit, before respondents will start phoning and asking what happened to their cheque.

The Brand Self-Test: How Well Do You Know Your Brand?

Don Shultz at Shift-This  asks the question:

Is your brand based more on the dreamy aspirations of executives than the real perceptions of the market?  This multiple-choice quiz determnines whether your company's branding efforts are strong, unified, comprehensive and rooted in customer reality.

I took the quiz, but was not brave enough to see how well I did -- after all, this is a guy who has an image of a fly crawling around on his site, and I hadn't yet finished my first coffee.  But it's a good quiz, and will shake you out of any complacency you might be feeling. 

Thanks to Ruth Lukaweski of the MRIA's B2B Committee for bringing this site to my attention.

B2B Customer Experience: Rules for Rainmakers

Michael W. McLaughlin in Marketing Profs sets out Rules for Rainmakers (free subscription):

Rainmakers go beyond the superficial to cultivate a holistic and substantive understanding of the customer's strategic and operational issues. Their mindset is that of a business advisor, not simply a vendor. Rainmakers immerse themselves in the high-priority concerns facing all of the customer's executives.

When you are thinking of the B2B customer experience, this is the holy grail all account personnel need to strive for: value added business advisor.

This is not just a matter of training, of course.  The people in Staples that are offering you this week's special on highlighters are not just a relationship course away from providing strategic advice, anymore than you or I are just a leadership course away from being CEO of GE.

Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?

The telco world has two kinds of firms in it these days:  the ones that have been around for decades and have engineering in their DNA, and the ones that are newcomers and have marketing in their DNA.  Those with engineering DNA sometimes struggle to provide a n integrated customer experience, and Bell Canada is no exception.

If you have ever tried to figure out how to configure the nodes for your Business ISP service, understand your toll-free number billing, or questioned why a small business is getting FOUR statements every month, plus bonus statements quarterly, there is good news on the horizaon.  Smart marketers like Marianna Ciocio are thinking about SMEs, and this is real cause for hope.

Because she is thinking some very interesting and insightful thoughts.

Ms. Ciocio spoke to an event earlier this week on B2B research and marketing to SME customers.   This is someone who is observing carefully, and listening to customers.  Let me share a few of these observations with you.

SME customers struggle with the integration of telecom.  They don't have specialized technical staff to deal with it like those enterprise customers do: they're on their own.  They're not always sure how to put the pieces together.  And they find it frustrating to deal with multiple suppliers.  (You are your own systems integrator)  IT and telecomm are becoming almost indistinguishable, but the model to put them smoothly together is not yet clear.  Should telco's provide servers?  Should they lease you a PC? 

Funny isn't it -- when we were all talking about convergence, we didn't clearly see the strategy mish-mash that would be faced by enterprises attempting to develop a coherent market position. 

A long-term focus on customer acquisition has made retention and loyalty a poor cousin.  (I can certainly vouch for this, every time I call to find out why I can't get the discount being offered to acquire new high speed customers.) 

Market segmentation has tended to be based on internal spend -- how much is the customer spending with Bell every year.  (Doesn't this sound so much like financial services?)    There is a need to move towards more behavior based segments and targeting, looking at the whole value delivery system.   And not just at a point in time, but throughout the business life cycle.

Good questions are being asked.  Like, when in the life of a business does the need emerge for basic service?  Is it before you register the company name?  When you find an office?  Before or after the domain name?  And when does the need emerge for additional telcom and other services?  What are the life events in the business that trigger these needs? 

The history of the company as an engineering company is something of a burden for them culturally -- in the past, they generally had the product in mind -- or even built -- before they started the research.  Now they are trying to look out at the behaviors involved in running a business, interacting with suppliers, interacting with technology, and the problems people have.   

They are starting to look for areas of opportunity in the customers, not in the technology. 

The cultural history is not unique by any means -- there are many examples of relatively introverted companies, especially where there has been a strong regulatory framework in place.  The benefits in these industries have been incredible stability and reliability.  Let's face it, when you pick up a land line and there is no dial tone, you look out the window to see what disaster has befallen.  Because it sure isn't some sort of re-boot situation.   

Like other complex service businesses, this firm is also challenged by the need to work effectively across functional and business line silos, and the organization is not really designed to make that easy.  (Did I mention the similarities to financial services?) 

So don't expect change to happen overnight.  But there are some smart committed individuals over there that would like to make things better.  And here's to them.  Because we all need telecom.

B2B Marketing Communications Getting Sophisticated

Ruth Lukaweski hosted a great panel discussion at an MRIA event earlier this week on trends in  B2B marketing communications and the role of research.   (No really, this actually was a good panel discussion.  She moderated, and there weren't any PowerPoint slides!) 

The panel included senior people from three B2B advertising agencies.  Note that none of these companies calls themselves advertisers -- they are all in the marketing positioning, marketing communications space.   They all offer integrated service, including strategy, positioning, message, creative, and production.  All indicated they are moving more and more towards positioning themselves -- and billing as -- consultants, not agencies.

Medium Sized Business Marketing - Seven Deadly Sins

Michael Szego of OgilvyOne says there are seven deadly sins when marketing to medium sized enterprises (which he defined as having from 50 - 500 employees).   Good principles to consider when managing the customer experience for this group.

1.  The Middle Market "Effort". SME's have great radar for detecting the big marketing push that lacks genuine commitment.  They want an ongoing relationship and follow-through to them and their company.  They want to know that you are going to be there next quarter if they are going to move their business to you.

2.  Talking Up.  SME's may not aspire to be 1000 person companies.  They don't appreciate hearing "We know you'll be big some day".  It's off-putting, because they see themselves as successful now.  What is intended as flattery is in fact patronizing, just like Sin #3 ...

3.  Talking Down.  SME's don't like that "Hey, little guy, we know what's right for you" language any better.   They'd much rather you demonstrate that you know by creating service offerings that make sense for them. 

4.  Bargain Sales.  SME's want a comprehensive value proposition, not just a low price.  What looks like price sensitivity is actually just astute purchasing.  When there is value to pay for, they'll pay.  So don't just tell them about the low, low price.

5.  Club Talk.  Corporate jargon is not welcome -- you need to speak their language.  This means surgically extracting tech specs that are not essential, and focusing on real benefits.  Jargon talk spells expense and complexity to many SMEs.  They also want you to honor their values, which are frequently different from the Fortune 500.   

6.  Have I Got a Box for You.  SME's need customization as much as the Fortune 500 do.  They don't like being offered an opportunity to force-fit their needs into your inflexible bundle.

7.  Commitment Issues.  They've been burnt before by companies that aren't really committed to the SME market, and they can smell this a mile away.  SME's frequently believe they are misunderstood by big corporates, and you will need to demonstrate your understanding to show commitment. 

Elaine Taylor, also from OgilvyOne, says that if you want to successfully target these markets, you must develop offerings that speak to their unique needs.  Scaled-down versions of enterprise solutions with the guts -- and most of the value -- removed, are not the answer.  She calls this "Enterprise Lite" -- just like lite beer, it lacks flavor.    The same is true for taking the consumer offering and trying to move it up a level.  SME's can spot the bells and whistles for what they are, and they don't spell value.   

Taylor points to IBM as a company that had major credibility issues in this market segment in the past, and has met success by listening and responding.