Friday, January 25, 2013
Monday, October 15, 2012
Chris O'Connor: 3 Tips to Increase Time Spent Selling
Most businesses today are evaluating integrating social and mobile solutions into their core processes. Mobile in particular is fast becoming a necessary area of expertise for software pundits. The best strategies that leverage social and mobile do so to ultimately increase a sales team's time spent selling so that, without adding headcount, a company can grow lead generation and drive revenues.
In order to increase selling time other tasks must be streamlined and simplified. Today, IT leaders are looking for ways to derive new value from and increase productivity via tools that are commonly viewed as solely for reporting (think Salesforce and SAP). Steering these mega-systems in fresh directions takes time but as the proliferation of social channels and mobile apps illustrate, there exists an innovative, iterative start-up ecosystem today that can benefit the enterprise in the following ways:
Nimble Wins
Companies exist today that are nimble enough to be experimental. Their time scales are shorter to execute on pieces of an enterprise's overall strategy. Going outside your organization allows you to tap into the energy that these startups embody. If your product team doesn't jump as high as you'd like anymore, there's a team out there that has domain expertise and can respond to your needs likely even bringing in better ideas in the process. Tap into the nimble, be quicker to execute on your strategy and be the first mover in your industry to see the benefits of social and mobile business processes. Speed and fluidity are deal-breakers.
The Integrated Stream is Not Enough
Even the biggest acquirers on the block these days recognize that they still have gaps around various aspects of their offerings -- be it mobile or otherwise. You can staff up, onboard new people and get them working on plugging that hole internally, however, time is money and if an "acquihire" isn't in your budget you're fortunate that there are people who, in many cases, have left large organizations to start companies aimed at tackling repeatable processes with innovative new approaches. Don't just stick to mobile and social 1.0 and put social streams into workflow applications -- it's not enough and that approach is viewed as pedestrian by your top performing "prosumers." Rather, add mobile and social into core product functionality that intrinsically changes how tasks are completed from the top to the bottom of your stack. If your team can gather (or, better yet, receive) information to prepare for a meeting more efficiently on the go, their effectiveness in closing deals will increase.
People are Primed
Administrative reporting, time lost due to travel, and communicating back with the "mothership" are all time sucks for road warriors. The integration of social and mobile tactics into business processes, content creation, dissemination and data management will impact each sales person's results. As I've mentioned before, a virtue of this trend is that, in the case of many employees, the training has been done for you by years of consumer phone use, social networking, information gathering through search, chatting online, app buying/use, even gaming etc. Your employees are primed and ready to intuitively navigate your social business to the benefit of the company.
Every minute your sales team spends doing something that doesn't help them network more effectively, stay in touch with existing contacts, and better understand their contacts through real-time, up to date information is a minute lost in their sales cycle. Help them help you by baking smart, intuitive, and even fun mobile and social capabilities into their everyday workflows. via huffingtonpost.com
Jim is an expert on leadership, competitive strategy, and organizational issues. Some of his work has focused on how organizations attain superior performance, and how they constantly reinvent advantages to propel growth in times of stress.
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Tuesday, May 1, 2012
4 Ways LinkedIn Groups Drive Traffic to Your Website: Social Media
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Do you feel like you’re wasting time whenever you log into LinkedIn? If so, you’re not lone. Nearly everyone I know is disappointed with the results they get from spending time on LinkedIn. Very few really know how to make LinkedIn work as a traffic source or marketing medium.
More Traffic or Better Traffic? How ‘Bout Both?
The bad news: LinkedIn may not be the most prolific traffic source for driving traffic.
The good news: Linkedin tends to be a source of very high-quality traffic. Leads are more qualified, more targeted, more focused on ‘doing business’ than ones coming from Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.Based on personal experience, I can tell you that LinkedIn can send gobs of traffic to your website. Not kitten video-seekers, but qualified prospects curious about doing business with you. In fact, for one month last summer, LinkedIn sent more visitors to my website than Google.
Here are four great ways to leverage LinkedIn Groups as a real source of traffic
1. Create a Unique Profile. The foundation for a solid LinkedIn traffic strategy is setting up a unique profile. What does that have to do with Groups? More than you might think.
Having an engaging profile establishes your credibility, tells visitors and group members what’s special about you and why they should pay attention to you. These factors are essential for your long-term goals.
Many of your group co-members will judge you, at least in part, based on your profile. Many will check out your profile before clicking on your links. They want to make sure you’re not a spammer or a psycho.
Most people make the mistake of creating profiles that look like old-fashioned résumés. In fact, the built-in Help Guides and descriptions will lead you to believe that’s what you should be doing. Don’t make that mistake. Create an interesting, compelling, visitor-centric profile. Stand out.
2. Join groups where your prospects congregate. It’s natural to want to connect with your colleagues, and that’s how most LinkedIn users select which groups to join. Keep in mind that most of your peers will never become your clients.
Let’s say that you’re an SEO expert. You can find plenty of groups for people just like you. But, if you spend your time there, you’ll mostly be “preaching to the choir” when you start discussions and share links. Additionally, you’ll just be one of many SEO experts in the group. You’ll be able to have fun talking shop, but you probably won’t be marketing your services to them.
On the other hand, if you join groups of small business owners, you might be the only person in the group who understands how to rank on Google. Now you get to be the resident expert. You get to educate the entire group!
LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups. No matter how many you become a member of, spend at least half of your time where your ideal prospects are.
3. Discussions. When starting discussions, be Relevant, Riveting and Regular.
This is the main active part of your traffic strategy.
Relevant – When you write articles, blog posts, etc., share them in groups where they will be appreciated and valued. The SEO expert’s article probably isn’t appropriate in a group for offline marketers.
You can start new discussions to present your content, but you should also post relevant links in response to discussions that others are already talking about.
Riveting – Share compelling content. Again, stay focused on the reader. What are her struggles? What is he just dying to know? What benefits are group members striving to obtain that you can deliver?
The content also has to be packaged in a riveting way. The most traffic I’ve ever received from LinkedIn came from discussions entitled “Satanic Sales Pitches.” That turned out to be a very effective attention-grabber.
Like everywhere else on line, there’s so much clutter, you can’t afford to be boring.
Regular – I advise people to start 2 or 3 conversations per week at most.
If you post too infrequently, you’ll start losing ground. But don’t be that person who posts 5 links back-to-back every day of the week. You’ll only irritate people, and moderators might block you or kick you out of the group.
You’ll also want to participate in other people’s discussions. That shows you’re not self-centered. You want to listen as well as speak.
4. Start your own groups.
If you have the time to dedicate, or if you can enlist the help of trustworthy managers and moderators, starting groups is an unparalleled opportunity to market yourself and drive traffic where ever you want.
The benefits of starting your own groups are obvious. Instant credibility, a captive audience and free reign to direct all conversation that takes place in the community.
You also get to send an email to your membership up to once a week. It’s almost like a free weekly newsletter. You have the chance to educate, persuade, sell, and link to content that you want your members to know about.
You already know that they’re interested in the topics you’re addressing, so they are likely to be high-quality potential customers.
Imagine what you could do with 500, 1,000, 10,000 group members? Would that transform your LinkedIn experience?
I achieved nothing during my first year on LinkedIn. I didn’t get it. But through plenty of trial and error, I discovered what’s possible and what works. Take these ideas and implement them. Experiment. You can accomplish so much more than you’re used to.
I’d love to hear your success stories.
Donnie Bryant is a direct response copywriter and marketing consultant. He specializes in radically improving businesses with Stealth Salesmanship and Strategic Marketing. Find out more at http://donnie-bryant.com/.> via zddesign.net
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Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a leading Strategic Management and Innovation Consulting Firm in Denver, Colorado. He is an author, speaker, and a strategic innovation and hypercompetition expert to profit, non-profit organizations and municipalities. He advises clients with an objective view of their competitive capabilities and defines a clear course of action to maximize their innovation return on investment to achieve profitable growth. Build a capability for ongoing competitive innovation across your company. Call 719-649-4118 or complete our form: contact us for more information on hiring Jim to advise or speak for your next event.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Russell Blackmore: Top ten mistakes online entrepreneurs should avoid
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Are you new to the e-tail game? Just started selling products and services over the web? Well, avoid the mistakes made by countless entrepreneurs before you. Heed this advice from Russell Blackmore, co-founder of photography e-tailer Sonic Editions.
1. Don't try to fit in
Good companies disrupt the current market. Made.com and Dollar Shave Club are both magnificent examples of this. Don’t try to fit in with what else is out there – create a new experience and you’ll carve yourself a niche in a crowded market.
2. Don't do it all yourself
Utilise the power of others. Partnerships help to build traffic and brand equity. If credible brands are working with you, chances are others will too.
3. Keep an eye on stock management
Our prints are made to order, which means we don’t get caught with a lot of excess stock that we need to store and pay for its upkeep. If you have to pay to keep stock that you’re not using, it’s a waste of money.
4. Be mindful of over-selling
Connect with your audience regularly but do not over sell. Use social media to reach out to your audience, rather than pushing a hard sell. You need just enough exposure but not to the point of overkill.
5. You are your product or service
Brands should be reflective of their products. If you’re selling something with a premium price point, your customer experience must reflect that. The service is just as important as the product. Do your research and know what experience you want to create – then live and breathe it in everything that you do.
6. Always answer consumer enquiries
Ignore a consumer enquiry at your peril. Some of the best leads come through social media, so make sure you check who is getting in touch and what they’re saying. Responsive customer service will mean repeat business.
7. Start small, think big
Offer your product in a variety of key currencies. Only when you’ve built up the sales base in a different country should you consider translating into a different language. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Not at the start, at least.
8. Poor delivery is a no-no
Find a trusted and reliable delivery partner. Poor service will come back and reflect badly on you. Remember the video of the USP deliveryman throwing the monitor over the wall? There’s no point in your company being let down at the end of the line.
9. Hone your IT skills
Update your website every day. You will have to understand basic simple rules. For example, lots of traffic will crash your site. This is something that you’ll need in all aspects for your role. You cannot simply depend on smart interns to keep your tech side running.
10. Banks are not your friend
Don’t over rely on the bank. Make sure you know where your finances are coming from!
Want to increase growth and avoid more losses? Want to out compete your competitors? Want to bring new products and services to market faster? Want to be more agile? Contact Innovation and Growth Speaker Jim Woods. Jim works confidentially with start ups, governments as well as profit and for profit enterprises.
Visit our website:www.innothinkgroup.com Executive and Business Coaching: http://ow.ly/anBpK
Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective growth strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability.james@innothinkgroup.com
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Thursday, April 19, 2012
How To Demystify Social Media - McKinsey
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As the marketing power of social media grows, it no longer makes sense to treat it as an experiment. Here’s how senior leaders can harness social media to shape consumer decision making in predictable ways.
Executives certainly know what social media is. After all, if Facebook users constituted a country, it would be the world’s third largest, behind China and India. Executives can even claim to know what makes social media so potent: its ability to amplify word-of-mouth effects. Yet the vast majority of executives have no idea how to harness social media’s power. Companies diligently establish Twitter feeds and branded Facebook pages, but few have a deep understanding of exactly how social media interacts with consumers to expand product and brand recognition, drive sales and profitability, and engender loyalty.
We believe there are two interrelated reasons why social media remains an enigma wrapped in a riddle for many executives, particularly nonmarketers. The first is its seemingly nebulous nature. It’s no secret that consumers increasingly go online to discuss products and brands, seek advice, and offer guidance. Yet it’s often difficult to see where and how to influence these conversations, which take place across an ever-growing variety of platforms, among diverse and dispersed communities, and may occur either with lightning speed or over the course of months. Second, there’s no single measure of social media’s financial impact, and many companies find that it’s difficult to justify devoting significant resources—financial or human—to an activity whose precise effect remains unclear.
What we hope to do here is to demystify social media. We have identified its four primary functions—to monitor, respond, amplify, and lead consumer behavior—and linked them to the journey consumers undertake when making purchasing decisions. Being able to identify exactly how, when, and where social media influences consumers helps executives to craft marketing strategies that take advantage of social media’s unique ability to engage with customers. It should also help leaders develop, launch, and demonstrate the financial impact of social-media campaigns (for insight into the world’s biggest social-media market, see “Understanding social media in China,” forthcoming on mckinseyquarterly.com).
In short, today’s chief executive can no longer treat social media as a side activity run solely by managers in marketing or public relations. It’s much more than simply another form of paid marketing, and it demands more too: a clear framework to help CEOs and other top executives evaluate investments in it, a plan for building support infrastructure, and performance-management systems to help leaders smartly scale their social presence. Companies that have these three elements in place can create critical new brand assets (such as content from customers or insights from their feedback), open up new channels for interactions (Twitter-based customer service, Facebook news feeds), and completely reposition a brand through the way its employees interact with customers or other parties.
The social consumer decision journey
Companies have quickly learned that social media works: 39 percent of companies we’ve surveyed already use social-media services as their primary digital tool to reach customers, and that percentage is expected to rise to 47 percent within the next four years.1 Fueling this growth is a growing list of success stories from mainstream companies:
Creating buzz: Eighteen months before Ford reentered the US subcompact-car market with its Fiesta model, it began a broad marketing campaign called the Fiesta Movement. A major element involved giving 100 social-media influencers a European model of the car, having them complete “missions,” and asking them to document their experiences on various social channels. Videos related to the Fiesta campaign generated 6.5 million views on YouTube, and Ford received 50,000 requests for information about the vehicle, primarily from non-Ford drivers. When it finally became available to the public, in late 2010, some 10,000 cars sold in the first six days.
Learning from customers: PepsiCo has used social networks to gather customer insights via its DEWmocracy promotions, which have led to the creation of new varieties of its Mountain Dew brand. Since 2008, the company has sold more than 36 million cases of them.
Targeting customers: Levi Strauss has used social media to offer location-specific deals. In one instance, direct interactions with just 400 consumers led 1,600 people to turn up at the company’s stores— an example of social media’s word-of-mouth effect.
Yet countless others have failed to match these successes: knowing that something works and understanding how it works are very different things. As the number of companies with Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, or online communities continues to grow, we think it’s time for leaders to remind themselves how social media connects with an organization’s broader marketing mission.
Marketing’s primary goal is to reach consumers at the moments, or touch points, that influence their purchasing behavior. Almost three years ago, our colleagues proposed a framework—the “consumer decision journey”—for understanding how consumers interact with companies during purchase decisions.2 Expressing consumer behavior as a winding journey with multiple feedback loops, this new framework was different from the traditional description of consumer purchasing behavior as a linear march through a funnel. Social media is a unique component of the consumer decision journey: it’s the only form of marketing that can touch consumers at each and every stage, from when they’re pondering brands and products right through the period after a purchase, as their experience influences the brands they prefer and their potential advocacy influences others.
A social journey
For more on social media’s relationship to the consumer decision journey, explore this interactive exhibit narrated by coauthor David Edelman.
The fact that social media can influence customers at every stage of the journey doesn’t mean that it should. Depending on the company and industry, some touch points are more important to competitive advantage than others.3 What’s more, our work with dozens of companies adapting to the new marketing environment strongly suggests that the most powerful social-media strategies focus on a limited number of marketing responses closely related to individual touch points along the consumer decision journey. The ten most important responses, range from providing customer service to fostering online communities (exhibit). One of those ten—monitoring what people say about your brand—is so important that we see it as a core function of social media, relevant across the entire consumer decision journey. The remaining nine responses, organized in three clusters in the exhibit, underpin efforts to use social media to respond to consumer comments, to amplify positive sentiment and activity, and to lead changes in the behavior and mind-sets of consumers.
1. Monitor
Gatorade, a sports drink manufactured by PepsiCo, has been diligently working toward its goal of becoming the “largest participatory brand in the world.”4 It has created a Chicago-based “war room” within its marketing department to monitor the brand in real time across social media. There are seats where team members can track custom-built data visualizations and dashboards (including terms related to the brand, sponsored athletes, and competitors) and run sentiment analyses around product and campaign launches. Every day, all of this feedback is integrated into products and marketing—for example, by helping to optimize the landing page on the company’s Web site. Since the war room’s creation, the average traffic to Gatorade’s online properties, the length of visitor interactions, and viral sharing from campaigns have all more than doubled.
Such brand monitoring—simply knowing what’s said online about your products and services—should be a default social-media function, taking place constantly. Even without engaging consumers directly, companies can glean insights from an effective monitoring program that informs everything from product design to marketing and provides advance warning of potentially negative publicity. It’s also critical to communicate such feedback within the business quickly: whoever is charged with brand monitoring must ensure that information reaches relevant functions, such as communications, design, marketing, public relations, or risk.
2. Respond
Valuable though it is to learn how you are doing and what to improve, broad and passive monitoring is only a start. Pinpointing conversations for responding at a personal level is another form of social-media engagement. This kind of response can certainly be positive if it’s done to provide customer service or to uncover sales leads. Most often, though, responding is a part of crisis management.
Last year, for example, a hoax photograph posted online claimed that McDonald’s was charging African-Americans an additional service fee. The hoax first appeared on Twitter, where the image rapidly went viral just before the weekend as was retweeted with the hashtag #seriouslymcdonalds. It turned out to be a working weekend for the McDonald’s social-media team. On Saturday, the company’s director of social media released a statement through Twitter declaring the photograph to be a hoax and asking key influencers to “please let your followers know.” The company continued to reinforce that message throughout the weekend, even responding personally to concerned Tweeters. By Sunday, the number of people who believed the image to be authentic had dwindled, and McDonald’s stock price rose 5 percent the following day.
Responding in order to counter negative comments and reinforce positive ones will only increase in importance. The responsibility for taking action may fall on functions outside marketing, and the message will differ depending on the situation. No response can be quick enough, and the ability to act rapidly requires the constant, proactive monitoring of social media—on weekends too. By responding rapidly, transparently, and honestly, companies can positively influence consumer sentiment and behavior.
3. Amplify
“Amplification” involves designing your marketing activities to have an inherently social motivator that spurs broader engagement and sharing. This approach means more than merely reaching the end of planning a marketing campaign and then thinking that “we should do something social”—say, uploading a television commercial to YouTube. It means that the core concepts for campaigns must invite customers into an experience that they can choose to extend by joining a conversation with the brand, product, fellow users, and other enthusiasts. It means having ongoing programs that share new content with customers and provide opportunities for sharing back. It means offering experiences that customers will feel great about sharing, because they gain a badge of honor by publicizing content that piques the interest of others.
In the initial phases of the consumer decision journey, when consumers sift through brands and products to determine their preferred options, referrals and recommendations are powerful social-media tools. A simple example is the way online deal sites such as Groupon and Gilt Groupe provide consumers with credit for each first-time purchaser they refer. Our research shows that such direct recommendations from peers generate engagement rates some 30 times higher than traditional online advertising does.
Once a consumer has decided which product to buy and makes a purchase, companies can use social media to amplify their engagement and foster loyalty. When Starbucks wanted to increase awareness of its brand, for example, it launched a competition challenging users to be the first to tweet a photograph of one of the new advertising posters that the company had placed in six major US cities, providing winners with a $20 gift card. This social-media brand advocacy effort delivered a marketing punch that significantly outweighed its budget. Starbucks said that the effort was “the difference between launching with millions of dollars versus millions of fans.”5
Marketers also can foster communities around their brands and products, both to reinforce the belief of consumers that they made a smart decision and to provide guidance for getting the most from a purchase. Software company Intuit, for example, launched customer service forums for its Quicken and QuickBooks personal-finance software so users could help one another with product issues. The result? Users rather than Intuit employees answer about 80 percent of the questions, and the company has employed user comments to make dozens of significant changes to its software.
4. Lead
Social media can be used most proactively to lead consumers toward long-term behavioral changes. In the early stages of the consumer decision journey, this may involve boosting brand awareness by driving Web traffic to content about existing products and services. When grooming-products group Old Spice introduced its Old Spice Man character to viewers, during the US National Football League’s 2010 Super Bowl, for example, the company’s ambition was to increase its reach and relevance to both men and women. The commercial became a phenomenon: starring former player Isaiah Mustafa, it got more than 19 million hits across all platforms, and year-on-year sales for the company’s products jumped by 27 percent within six months.
Marketers also can use social media to generate buzz through product launches, as Ford did in launching its Fiesta vehicle in the United States. For example, social media played an integral role in the success of “Small Business Saturday,” the US shopping promotion created by American Express for the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving (for American Express CMO John Hayes’s perspective on that launch, see “How we see it: Three senior executives on the future of marketing,” on mckinseyquarterly.com). In addition, when consumers are ready to buy, companies can promote time-sensitive targeted deals and offers through social media to generate traffic and sales. Online menswear company Bonobos, for example, provided an incentive for its Twitter followers by unlocking a discount code after its messages were resent a certain number of times. As a result of this effort, almost 100 consumers bought products from the site for the first time. The campaign delivered a 1,200 percent return on investment in just 24 hours.
Finally, social media can solicit consumer input after the purchase. This ability to gain product-development insights from customers in a relatively inexpensive way is emerging as one of social media’s most significant advantages. Intuit, for example, has its community forums. Starbucks uses MyStarbucksIdea.com to collect its customers’ views about improving the company’s products and services and then aggregates submitted ideas and prominently displays them on a dedicated Web site. That site groups ideas by product, experience, and involvement; ranks user participation; and shows ideas actively under consideration by the company and those that have been implemented.
Converting knowledge to action
Despite offering numerous opportunities to influence consumers, social media still accounts for less than 1 percent of an average marketing budget, in our experience. Many chief marketing officers say that they want to increase that share to 5 percent. One problem is that a lot of senior executives know little about social media. But the main obstacle is the perception that the return on investment (ROI) from such initiatives is uncertain.
Without a clear sense of the value social media creates, it’s perhaps not surprising that so many CEOs and other senior executives don’t feel comfortable when their companies go beyond mere “experiments” with social-media strategy. Yet we can measure the impact of social media well beyond straight volume and consumer-sentiment metrics; in fact, we can precisely determine the buzz surrounding a product or brand and then calculate how social media drives purchasing behavior. To do so—and then ensure that social media complements broader marketing strategies—companies must obviously coordinate data, tools, technology, and talent across multiple functions. In many cases, senior business leaders must open up their agendas and recognize the importance of supporting and even undertaking initiatives that may traditionally have been left to the chief marketing officer. As our colleagues noted last year, “we’re all marketers now.”6
Consider the experience of a telecommunications company that proactively adopted social media but had no idea if its efforts were working. The company had launched Twitter-based customer service capabilities, several promotional campaigns built around social contests, a fan page with discounts and tech tips, and an active response program to engage with people speaking about the brand. In social-media terms, the investment was relatively large, and the company’s senior executives wanted more than anecdotal evidence that the strategy was paying off. As a starting point, to ensure that the company was doing a quality job designing and executing its social presence, it benchmarked its efforts against approaches used by other companies known to be successful in social media. It then advanced the following hypotheses:
- If all of these social-media activities improve general service perceptions about the brand, that improvement should be reflected in a higher volume of positive online posts.7
- If social sharing is effective, added clicks and traffic should result in higher search placements.
- If both of these assumptions hold true, social-media activity should help drive sales—ideally, at a rate even higher than the company could achieve with its average gross rating point (GRP) of advertising expenditures.8
The company then tested its options. At various times, it spent less money on conventional advertising, especially as social-media activity ramped up, and it modeled the rising positive sentiment and higher search positions just as it would using traditional metrics. The company concluded that social-media activity not only boosted sales but also had higher ROIs than traditional marketing did. Thus, while the company took a risk by shifting emphasis toward social-media efforts before it had data confirming that this was the correct course, the bet paid off. What’s more, the analytic baseline now in place has given the company confidence to continue exploring a growing role for social media.
In other cases, social media may have a more specific role, such as helping to launch a new product or to mitigate negative word of mouth. Similar types of analyses can focus on mixing the impact of buzz, search, and traffic; correlating that with sales or renewals (or whatever the key metric may be); and then gauging the result against total costs. This approach can give executives the confidence and focus they need to invest more money, time, and resources in social media.
As these social-media activities gain scale, the challenges center less around justifying funding and more around organizational issues such as developing the right processes and governance structure, identifying clear roles—for all involved in social-media strategy, from marketing to customer service to product development—and bolstering the talent base, and improving performance standards. New capabilities abound, and social-media best practices are barely starting to emerge. We do know this: because social-media influences every element of the consumer decision journey, communication must take place between as well as within functions. That complicates lines of reporting and decision-making authority.
If insights from monitoring social media are relevant to nonmarketing functions such as product development, for instance, how will you identify and disseminate that information efficiently and effectively—and then ensure that it gets used? If you spot an opportunity to have a meaningful conversation with a key influencer, how will you quickly engage the right senior executive to follow through? If you recognize a fast-moving service concern, how will you respond rapidly and openly—and when should you do so outside the traditional service organization? Senior executives across the company must recognize and begin to answer such questions.
Social media is extending the disruptive impact of the digital era across a broad range of functions. Meanwhile, the perceived lack of metrics, the fear, and the limited sense of what’s possible are eroding. Executives can identify the functions, touch points, and goals of social-media activities, as well as craft approaches to measure their impact and manage their risks. The time is ripe for executive-suite discussions on how to lead and to learn from people within your company, marketers outside it, and, most of all, your customers.
About the Author
Roxane Divol is a principal in McKinsey’s San Francisco office, David Edelman is a principal in the Boston office, and Hugo Sarrazin is a director in the Silicon Valley office.
The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Sirish Chandrasekaran, Dianne Esber, Rebecca Millman, and Dan Singer to the development of this article.
Want to increase growth and avoid losses? Want to out compete your competitors? Want to bring new products and services to market faster? Want to be more agile? Contact Innovation and Growth Speaker Jim Woods. Jim works confidentially with start ups, governments as well as profit and for profit enterprises.
Visit our website:www.innothinkgroup.com Executive and Business Coaching: http://ow.ly/anBpK
Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective growth strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability.james@innothinkgroup.com
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