As marketing students we all probably remember the four Ps: Product, Pricing, Placement and Promotion – the traditional model of marketing.

Today marketing has been reinvented and the Ps are being replaced with Cs – Collaboration, Creativity, Connection and Communication.  Brands now need to tap into those online community connections and hence the term Swarm Marketing was born.

Recently Dell revealed Dell Swarm a new marketing scheme in Singapore. As discussed by the Ebiquity Blog it goes like this: If you agree to buy a laptop on Dell Swarm, the discounted price drops as others join your “swarm” and also buy.

Here’s how the Dell system is described:

-Start by picking the laptop you would like to purchase. Be the first buyer to join a Swarm and you’ll enjoy a price lower than Dell.com’s best discounted price (after cash rebates).

-Join a Swarm after, and you’ll enjoy a new, lower price – as will all previous buyers. 

- Once the swarms closes – which is when the limit of 15 buyers or 72 hours is reached, whichever is the earlier, the price is then finalised. This final, lowest price now becomes everyone’s purchase price – including yours!

-To get the maximum discount, grow the Swarm by Sharing with your friends. You can share via Twitter Or post a note on your Facebook® profile and tell all of your friends Point others towards your Swarm using Digg, del.icio.us and other tools. Or simply send your friends an email directly! Not ready to buy yet? You can also choose to Follow the Swarm. You’ll then receive updates via email. As well as through free SMS alerts.

What other examples do you have of swarm marketing? are there examples in Australia?

Could your business benefit from a Swarm marketing approach?

I came across a great  presentation this morning -on my rss feed for the wonderful AppGap –  it is certainly worth a read.  What I thoroughly support in this presentation is the idea of breaking down the internal business silos between customer research, pr and crm – a position I put forward in a recent blog post entitled Social Media Why Its Not All About You  

If your social media agency can’t talk across the business silos (ie not just pr or a quick viral campaign) maximisation of the dollars you spend on Social Media will be reduced.

In a recently released report by Research and Markets entitled Analyzing the Australian Media & Advertising Industry it found that:

• The Australian newspaper industry is outperforming its counterparts in the UK and US, with advertising revenues only falling marginally from 2008.
• In the advertising scenario, there is a global recession, and it is forecasted that Australia will have a soft 2009, after two strong years of performance.
• According to market researcher Aegis Media, the advertising industry in Australia will increase 1.7% in 2009. However, with a price inflation of 5.2%, spending will actually drop 3.5%.
• Only the online sector will mark a real growth of 9.7%, but the figure is cut to 5.7% if price inflation is considered.
•  The convergence of the Internet with television, the growth of wireless communication, and the increasing use of digital video recorders all offer new avenues and challenges for advertisers.
• Further consolidation across national borders is also expected as ad firms try to deliver global capabilities in an increasingly competitive market.

 About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy .  Enjoy the article? please subscribe to the RSS Feed

It has been a week of ‘Influence’ locally with Ross Dawson launching the Influence Landscape Framework and Gavin Heaton summarising and commenting on some of the recent findings and blogposts.

Internationally ‘influence’ was also being discussed in a  paper by the Harvard School of Business and in the latest issue of Business Week where the cover page stated “What’s a friend worth”.

The Harvard Paper

The Harvard School of Business paper entitled  Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network? (by Raghuram Iyengar, Sangman Han, and Sunil Gupta) undertook research to to look at the influence of friends on purchasing decisions.

The Study

Using data from Cyworld, (a very popular Korean social networking site) the study empirically assessed if friends indeed influence purchases. Using 10 weeks of purchase and non-purchase data from 208 users they built an individual level model of choice (buy-no buy) and quantity (how much money to spend).

Findings

The key takeouts of the paper were:

• There is a significant and positive impact of friends’ purchases on the purchase probability of a user.
• The study identifies three distinct group of users
• However, there are significant differences across users. Specifically, this social effect is zero for 48 percent of the users, negative for 12 percent of the users, and positive for 40 percent of the users.
• “Moderately connected” users exhibit “keeping up with the Joneses” behavior. On average, this social influence translates into a 5 percent increase in revenues.
• Highly connected users tend to reduce their purchases of items when they see their friends buying them. This negative social effect reduces the revenue for this group by more than 14 percent. This finding is consistent with the typical fashion cycle wherein opinion leaders or the elite in the fashion industry tend to abandon one type of fashion and adopt the next in order to differentiate themselves from the masses.

The researchers said: “…The members in high status group have an influence on those in the middle status group for the diffusion of a new product. However, a successful diffusion in the middle status segment may make high status members lose interest in the new product.”  

The findings naturally have implications for the way you engage differing users within the social networks.

You can download the full report  to read more.

Business Week

In addition to the Harvard paper above the cover story on the June 1 BusinessWeek edition,  asks “What’s a Friend Worth?” 

The article examines how  “Companies are working fast to figure out how to make money from the wealth of data they’re beginning to have about our online friendships“.

The article is of note as it not only examines networked relationships in the external world (around social networks and marketing) but also examines them within companies from a knowledge management – KM perspective (ie how can we more effectively transmit knowledge around the organisation). 

Many years ago when I was involved in developing Knowledge Management strategies understanding social network analysis theory and identifying the ‘connectors’ within an organisation was vital in understanding knowledge flow and who would ideally make the ideal ‘knowledge champion’ within each companyand division.

The same connector/influencer knowledge was then applied when I crafted Internal Communication plans – particularly around ‘Change Communications’ or introduced a new decentralised Intranet that need the ‘influencers’ involved.

Social Network Analysis (SNA) has been around for many years its not new but with the focus on online social networks researchers are now scrambling to crack the code.

About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy .  Enjoy the article? please subscribe to the RSS Feed

Yelp

I recently read a fascinating  interview from econsultancy with Laura Nestler, Community Manager of Yelp. Yelp is an online review site that started in the US in 2004 and recently launched in the UK with new features. It is interesting to see how the site has been continually developing and adding new elements over the years.

The most interesting aspect of the new version of Yelp is the additional functionality that gives business owners the opportunity to respond to reviewers favourable or unfavourable reviews.  This is a key development and I believe much overdue. The ’two way dialogue’ model that forms the foundation of Social Media needs to occur to ensure continual dialogue and transparency.

So what else is new for Yelp? as with many online applications they have now launched our most recent iPhone application – Yelp for iPhone – and they expect to roll out further apps for other devices in future.

Review Sites in a Tight Economy

As the economy tightens consumers are spending more time on the internet researching product purchases before they buy.  Online product review sites are one of the leading types of user-generated content on the web today and their role will become increasingly important.

The following figures show the significance of review sites for consumers.

Does your website have a review element?  it might be a great way to start engaging with your customers today.

Review Statistics

Article of note: Tips on building your review site

About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy .  Enjoy the article? please subscribe to the RSS Feed

Information Aesthetics one of my favourite blogs brought the following to my attention:

“Google recently introduced its so-called Wonder Wheel as an addition to its normal results page. .. this new feature shows how Google might be slowly stepping into the search visualization space. You should be able to see the graph for yourself, either by following the link above, or by choosing the “Show Options…” link immediately under the search box on a results page.”

As a digital marketer this is a tool I will be using to examine  relevant keywords  and find niches for my clients online.

How will you use the Wonder Wheel?

About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy . Enjoy the article? please subscribe to the RSS Feed

Simon Waldman, Guardian Media Group digital strategy and development director, said of the initiative, “A huge amount of the commercial health of the internet is going to be driven by the decisions of chief executives at blue-chip companies, influenced by their marketing directors. The digital agenda has to hit all areas of firms’ marketing and business strategies.”

Digital Network chairman Scott Gallacher said, “A lot of the case for digital has been proven but there’s a challenge regarding delivery of results in a blue-chip corporate environment. This initiative is designed to let the digital industry recognise the needs of corporate organisations and help them understand the role digital can play.”

The initiative certainly looks well founded. Will the Australian Marketing Institute follow up with a similar initiative?

About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy . Enjoy the article? please subscribe to the RSS Feed

How many times have you heard marketers or pr professionals say:

- “Social Media is so hard to get over the line’  and -’Its hard to demonstrate the ROI of Social Media’ or

-’The CEO is just not on board with the Social Media idea’

These comments typically come from individuals that do not have the full business picture in mind when they are talking with their client.

As marketers we often think of Social Media as part of our own personal toolkit – albiet a growing and quickly developing one. Via Social Media we have the capacity to reach consumers,  with some prs still aiming to get a few messages across  (yes very old school) and ideally raise the brand profile and ultimately sell the item that we are marketing.

So what is wrong with that notion? After working in traditional media, online pr, market research 2.0 and knowledge management it is clearly evident that we need to recognise that Social Media touches all the above disciplines within a business including R&D and CRM.  As individuals within those disciplines we need to step outside our own areas and look at how we deliver business value across many areas of the business  – a much more wholistic approach.

So how is this relevant to you as a marketer? First understand that the Twitter account that you are trying to sell in for pr purposes can also be used for CRM and that means working with those relevant internally to support customers if complaints arise.  That branded Online Community that you are thinking about will provide ROI for many elements of your business including innovation and R&D. It is not just about your big shiny idea or your pr/marketing silo, or for that matter (and this is positive) the marketing budget.

Finally social media strategies can be devised and initially implemented by agencies but collaborative maintenance must come from the company itself.   What is maintenance? after the initial burst of creative activity is the hard yakka of continuing the conversation with your consumers, listening to them and embracing what you learn. If your social media marketing agency is simply selling you a one-off campaign and not educating you along the way they are doing you a disservice. Sure campaigns such as World’s Best Job have a finite time period but most customer engagement strategies should be for the long-term.

Social Media has the power to transform a company,  break down internal silos, deliver excellent ROI, engage with consumers and deliver more relevant products to the marketplace but we need to first recognise its not all about us.

About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy . Enjoy the article?please subscribe to the RSS Feed .

Update May 9 Mashable produced an excellent article using Twitter for customer service well worth a read!

The Global Online Media Landscape report by Nielsen has just been released and there are some interesting findings.

Some key takeouts include:

• Online display advertising’s share of revenue has plateued at 20% of total online ad spend in the US
• Online video has high engagement levels
• Search continues to be indispensible tool for online with search across social media networks the likely next opportunity
• Long term prospects for the global online medium continue to be bright.
• Shopping directories and guides style portals are declining in interest with social media sites such as Facebook graduating into ‘some of the most significant short tail sites’
• Member communities surpassed email for the first time in Feb 09
• Twitter is the biggest media story of the year with conversations around Twitter surpased Facebook during March 09
• Market Research ‘ as we know it will be enriched and redirected’ due to the Social Media phenomenon
• Mums and in particular new mums are more likely to  visit social networking sites and publish their own blog than most other online users.
• Women 40-50 in the home are the fastest growing demographic on Facebook
• Social Media will change advertising ‘ marketers will ignore these [social media] communities at their own peril’. The report examines the Motrin advertising and discusses the impact it has. (you can read more here about Motrin from one of my previous guest blog posts).
• 2009 is the year of the mobile with proliferation of smart phones

In future posts I will be examining the trends and what they mean for the Australian marketplace.

About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy . Enjoy the article?please subscribe to the RSS Feed

Has twitter reached maturity? This week it may seem that way with unborn babies now able to tweet.

A tech student from NYC who didn’t want to miss a single moment of his wife’s pregnancy, has invented a device that instantly posts his unborn baby’s kicks on Twitter…

 http://www.viralblog.com/widgets-apps/unborn-baby-kicks-its-first-tweet-on-twitter/