Social Media Marketing and going to the gym ( part two)

Hey Everyone,

I wrote a post a while back called social media engagement and going to the gym ( An analogy)

http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/152233-social-media-engagement-and-going-to-the-gym-an-analogy?started_from=new_topic

I received a few hundred responses from IT marketers ( spiceworks clients and prospects I am trying to get invovled inside Spiceworks) saying they see the benefit of engagement but it’s so hard to attribute ROI to any kind of social effort.

Obviously Spiceworks is not just a social media platform but social engagement is a big part of our approach.

So in the Spiceworks spirit of listening to our clients/partners.

Here is my sequel post with a process that a couple of Spiceworks clients have used to show management the value of how social engagement drive’s $100,000’s of dollars to the pipeline and closed business. ( especially in a pure 100% IT platform like spiceworks)

 

The ROI of Social Media within the IT buyer community :

So often we hear people struggling with how to manage the return of their social media efforts. I do sometimes struggle with this when a IT vendor says I can’t spend time or $$ on social media until I can get exact ROI. ( Hmmmm what is the ROI on the beautiful fountain outside the HQ that costs $160,000 a year to run?:) ( True story from a previous software company I worked at by the way)

I sometimes think IT marketers are so focused on the ROI of a one-time ad, web page or action, and therefore they miss ( ironically) $100,000’s worth of opportunities because they don’t see that social media is ongoing conversational engagement. They forget that you need to go to the buyers first, provide them value, and spend time with them before they may take action.

There are 7 Million IT buyers ( 1 – 1,000 employees) who control over $900 Billion dollars of spend globally

4 straight forward tips:

• Engage
• put some roots down
• understand who your buyers are and where they live, work and play.
• Do so and not only will people engage and respond to your efforts, they will purchase your products – and that is the best ROI a brand can get right.

So let’s take you through a proven process for IT vendors, Direct market resellers and VAR’s can use to monitor and track ROI conversations on Spiceworks:

Step 1: Set up a Spiceworks vendor page, run banners, send an e mail out to your specific target audience and start searching conversations topics in your area of expertise. ( Virtualization, Web filtering, security, backup etc)

Step 2: Browse the community and engage in the conversation, get known, be a resource.

Step 3: If someone expresses interest in you and your company , ask them permission to send some info, pricing, documentation etc. Continue the conversation. Shoot the person a note your info about your online store, discount, promotion, webinar, whitepaper, vendor page. RFQ button.

Step 4: If the person is interested, input them into your CRM ( lead source, create a opportunity associated to that conversation)

Step 5: Measure whether they end up buying! You can now track the origin and attribution of that lead, how many days it took to close, what other actions they took place prior to buying (vendor page follower, requested a quote,additional conversation in the community etc).

Step 6: Measure the percentage of time it takes on average to engage in these types of conversations and divide by average hourly rate of paying someone to do this type of activity or compare this to the $1,000,000’s being spent on cold calling teams, adwords, airport sponsorship, golf tournaments, full page print ad’s etc.

Let’s say it cost you $10,000 to get a person ( re the conversation) into the sales pipeline and they bought $50,000 worth of Hardware/software.

Step 7: (Revenue-Cost)/Cost = ROI so given this example: ($50,000 – $10,000) / $10,000 = 400% ROI. That ain’t bad going.

Here is a very funny Video discussing C –suite ROI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qNL8vAnZ-BY

I would love to hear from the IT buyers on this as well as our partners.

I would love to hear your feedback.

Respectfully,

Kenny

Social IT Marketing and the Channel

As more and more tech buyers turn to social networks to share and research information on IT products and services it’s having a significant impact on the technology distribution models born out of the 1980’s and 90’s. The typical way tech brands reached IT buyers was to recruit distributors and VARS and then hope they could sell products to as many customers as possible. In fact, manufacturers had no direct marketing initiatives of their own in place, relying solely on partners for marketing and sales.

The channel is obviously still an important part of the go to market strategy for IT vendors. However, with the rising influence of social networks on the technology research and buying process the linear, command and control mentality is gone forever.

Without the ability to participate in social discussions about their products and services vendors are taking a big gamble thinking the ”channel” will simply do the selling for them.

A great example of this shift can be seen among 1.7 Million IT professionals in the Spiceworks social network. They constantly tell me, “We want to engage with the technology vendors on our terms and turf. We will happily purchase products, services and solutions from resellers but it’s nice to ask the vendor a direct question every now and then.

If you are a vendor or reseller looking for ways to ensure your properly engaging IT buyers in social networks to complement and support your existing channel sales , here are some simple steps you can take:

• Have a real, ongoing presence in the social networks where your customers and potential customers hang out and do their job.

• When engaging customers in social networks be authentic and helpful.

• Engage customers and potential buyers on their terms whether that’s providing a whitepaper or answer a question in a forum.

For the channel relationship to prosper in today’s shifting social media landscape, both technology vendors and their resellers have important roles to play. Both can participate in the customer – driven conversation, which will help ensure their meeting customer’s needs in the new social buying process.