Danielle Gauthier

Many digital marketers are opting not only to listen more attentively to what consumers are saying about their brand, they are also providing opportunities where consumers are rewarded for innovative ideas that promote corporate needs.

This is nothing new – getting shoppers and employees to come up with name, slogans, essays have been popular for a long time. After all, countless minds working on a problem are better than a mere few. Now, with the increase of larger retailers employing social media to market their brands, consumers are challenged to produce ideas, inventions and content, and the stakes are getting ever higher.

User Generated Videos & Web Content

I blogged a while back about Best Buy and their partnership with MoFilm to ask consumers to create their own Best Buy branded “true stories” videos. YouTube has proven that user generated videos can go viral to an extent that corporate made videos cannot. Take for example the Dr. Pepper Tay Zonday Chocolate Cherry Rain video – 7,988,016 (and counting) people have opted into watching this Dr. Pepper “commercial” on YouTube, all their other commercials get a fraction of this traffic. Best Buy and Dr. Pepper are not alone in promoting user generated content. 3M, Doritos and Tourism Queensland have all achieved fairly substantial successes with their own user generated content contests. A recent Forrester report states that companies in the travel, food, entertainment, fashion, and retail verticals gravitate to such campaigns.

User Generated Ideas & Development

Some companies, generally in technology fields, will go so far as to give consumers the opportunity to help innovate products and play a part in developing new technologies. Rogers Mobile is using Facebook to digitally market the Rogers Best App Contest which allows consumers to suggest their ideas for Google Android apps and these can be voted on by other Facebook members. The value of this campaign is in that you must add an app to participate which promotes the brand across the platform. Further, the ideas generated all help in innovating the new Android mobile platform which Rogers is using as proof of the “mobile revolution” and even the ideas that do not win become fair game, and Rogers further obtains figures on how many people would be interested in specific apps and functionalities. Facebook users have the opportunity to win several phones, as well as a grand prize of having their app developed at a $50,000 value.

Give Them a Dream, Invest Them In Your Brand

It’s not just about the opportunity to win a large prize – I have seen contests for the opportunity to win a sticker, but still people will participate. People need dreams and given the opportunity to have a dream not matter how big will move them to unbelievable lengths. Here, consumers that engage in these types of contests they have dreams of renown and respect, and overall satisfaction at having created something that is valued by others. This dream becomes an investment in the brand being promoted, and will promote the contest and the company actively either to secure their winning through votes or just to get local recognition. The word of mouth value here is much more tangible, and this in relation to how large the user investment and how large the prize.

Digital channels offer more than the opportunity to sell products – turning customers into loyal customers, ones that will refer business, are more profitable than the one time buyer. Managing customer relationships and offering customer service in the channels preferred by the user offers some insights that cannot be obtained in traditional customer support situations. For example, shifting primary forms of customer service to a digital sphere indicates weaknesses in your company even if the commentary is not directed at your support staff.

Shoppers don’t want to wait on hold on the phone, they do not want to have to go into the store to be frustrated in person and clearly they do not want to send a letter via snail mail. If you can even still buy stamps. This is all common sense, right? Making a shift to digital channels is a logical and potentially very effective solution to the customer support dilemma.

Customer Support and Social Media

Here are some social media statistics to illustrate my point:

Community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users. (AT&T, 2002)

Community users spend 54% more than non-community users (EBay, 2006)

In customer support, live interaction costs 87% more per transaction on average than forums and other web self-service options. (ASP, 2002)

Cost per interaction in customers support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options. (Forrester, 2006)

Customers report good experiences in forums more than twice as often as they do via calls or mail. (Jupiter, 2006)

Answer Questions to Boost Sales – Best Buy USA and @Twelpforce

Best Buy USA is using Twitter to help boost sales and increase interaction with consumers:

Best Buy’s “Twelpforce” will search Twitter posts to find people seeking information about flat- panel televisions and other electronics, Chief Marketing Officer Barry Judge said in a telephone interview today. More than 500 employees at stores and at the company’s Richfield, Minnesota headquarters are signed up to participate, he said.

In addition, shoppers and customers can Twitter TwelpForce with their questions. It is important here that Best Buy makes a real effort to focus on the customer relationship building as opposed to spam marketing. There are some criticisms to the “service”, but I think that this is a good move in the right direction. Best Buy is making a real effort to participate within the digital space, and it is clear they are looking to increase the one to one contact consumers can have with Best Buy associates.

Pitney Bowes and the User Help Forum

What I find interesting about Pitney Bowes is not necessarily the use of the user forum. This is not an innovative or new idea, but it how the value of the forum was quantified that caught my eye. The Pitney Bowes example illustrates how companies can cut back on support costs by providing self-serve online options, as opposed to a call center format where the cost of each call can range from $5 to $10. They reported that:

the main question “How do I update rates on my machine?” was viewed upwards of 37K times, which would equate, according to the industry benchmark, of about a $70K support cost savings just for that question alone.

In addition, they have a Think Tank where customers can submit ideas or suggestions for products and services. These ideas are reviewed monthly by an executive steering committee.

Online Support Not Just For Online Retailers

Once again, it is time for brick and mortar retailers to take their cue from internet retailers and take advantage of the lower cost alternative available through digital channels. Interactions can occur quicker, and in some cases, no interaction is required and answers can be obtained quickly through self-service user-powered solutions. Either way, offering these alternatives increases a company’s ability to turn potential or one-time customers into loyal, referring brand fans.

It was much anticipated and then anti-climactic – Microsoft and Yahoo are to partner in the search sector to compete with Google. Microsoft will focus on organic search, Yahoo will focus on paid search. Each will continue to compete rigorously in other areas. Since the announcement of the deal, Yahoo stock has been sliding, surprising considering the many other very important web properties they own.

As a digital marketer employing organic and paid search marketing strategies, there are some key points in this deal to consider as the Microsoft Bing decision engine technology will now be used on Yahoo sites.

• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms;

• Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology.

• Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.

• Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.

• Yahoo! will innovate and “own” the user experience on Yahoo! properties, including the user experience for search, even though it will be powered by Microsoft technology.

• Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.

It has now become even easier to optimize for all major search engines – there will only be two and opportunities do increase with the growth of the user base. So marketers will likely start paying more attention to the Yahoo/Microsoft offering. On, the other hand, many web users will be tempted to migrate to Google following this deal if Yahoo is not effective enough in branding their Bing search engine results. If it looks too much like Microsoft while they are on a Yahoo site this might cause some confusion and discomfort, they just might switch to Google. After all they use Yahoo and not Bing for a reason.

This will be a topic to watch over the next year as they are scrutinized in order to satisfy anti-trust laws, though more likely this deal will be viewed as fostering competition as search has been clearly already dominated by Google. But what Google really needs to worry about is that new best thing someone is working on in their basement with their friends with no budget. Microsoft and Yahoo both have other things going for them and should stop worrying so much about search, it’s getting in the way.