The Social Marketing Choice - Retainer Based Agency Vs In-House

I think we can all agree that adding Social to your Integrated Marketing Strategy is no longer a question of "If" but rather "How?" But unlike TV or Print ads, Social is a funny animal. It really doesn't fit in one department. In Comcast's world, it's all customer support. Dell uses it for Product Development. And Starbucks leverages it for pure Marketing.

For smaller companies, it's hard to justify a full headcount OR retainer based agency fees going to manage Facebook. Now if you are really lucky, like Ben Bridge Jewelers, you have someone uber-talented who just steps up and takes it over for you. What's more likely is that you have someone uber-talented that doesn't step up. So while your Marketing geniuses are struggling with the build vs buy decision, someone down in Purchasing has 24,000 Twitter followers and is known as a Seattle Restaurant guru.

So, since a "Social Media Marketing Coordinator" can be a tough position to define, many companies just punt the whole thing and go the retainer based agency route. So what's right for you?

Consideration 1: Budget

Yes, the world is dictated by money. Sad, but true. And if you are a big company and don't have $5-$10k a month to spend on an agency, this is probably not your route. Now, if you run a few coffee shops or a winery, there are folks who will execute your Facebook and Twitter feeds for $1-3k a month. This can be a good deal. But if you fall in the world where you are a big company with no social budget, the agency route is tough. You are going to pay an agency the same type of hourly rates you'd pay a copywriter or designer. It's simply a necessity of them having to cover the overhead and turn a profit on the role. And if it's taking away from a media spend, they need to make the same margin as they would have on the media. So it gets pretty spendy.

Consideration 2: Interaction

There are two ways to look at social. One way is to say that every Tweet, Facebook post or blog comment is simply a text version of an ad banner that is an announcement to some community, The more effective approach is to consider your copy a conversation starter or enhancer. If you were at dinner, you wouldn't start a good story, then sneak away for the bathroom and never come back. You'd start the story, get to the punchline, then continue to converse as others joined in. If you want the latter, unless you have a nice budget, you probably want to train your folks in-house. 10 hours a week of engagement from an agency will not get you very far.

Consideration 3: In-House Talent

You probably have employees who you've deemed to be accountants, laborers, tech staff, support, design, etc...Do any of these employees have the chops to run a cross-department social program? It's possible they do. One way to find out is to simply look across Twitter and Facebook and see if any of your folks have a strong presence. Or, do a google search and find out if anyone has a prominent blog. We worked with one company who did an influencer identification report, only to find 3 of the top 10 influencers in the blogosphere on that topic worked for the company, and were already writing in their spare time.

Consideration 4: Strength of Community / Expertise of Product

We put these together because they kind of come with the same qualifiers. Hiring an agency is great when you have a somewhat generic stream of consciousness that you can fit creative copywriters into. It's also fantastic if you have heavy turnover, as you don't want the face of your social media changing every 3 months (unless you make that your plan.) But if your community demands to speak to a Product Manager or executive, or is asking questions about how to make repairs to a flux capacitor, then about the best an agency can do is act as traffic cop and route the interactions to the right place. This is an excellent of resources if you have significant budget, but harder to do on a shoestring.

In the end, expect a robust presence to require 20-40 hours of dedicated time across multiple people. Figure an agency at between $75-$125 per hour for engagement, management, account teams and any kind of tracking. In-house, you'll be pulling 5-10 hours away from 2-8 people, so figure out what the opportunity cost of that time is. Finally, consider the cost of initial training vs the cost of keeping the expertise outside the walls over the long-term.

10 Upcoming Posts for Companies Expanding their Social Marketing

Large or small, one tactic we advise our clients to pursue is developing and publishing against an editorial calendar. This helps different people in your organization prepare thoughtful insight in a well-organized fashion, in addition to simply commenting on the topical industry news of the day.

So, as we weave our way through the rest of the 3rd quarter, we thought we would practice what we preach, and lay out the roadmap for our primary content. After speaking with clients and potential clients, this list seems to cover most of the questions facing folks who are just starting to own their company's social marketing programs.

We'll be publishing about 1x a week, and using stories and examples from local companies. If you want to add an anecdote or experience, please email us.

1. The Choice - Agency vs In-House
Social is no longer a “nice to have” part of your Integrated Marketing Plan. The first important question departments have to ask is whether they have the talent in house, or do they need to outsource community management to an agency. Here are some things to think about, and how a couple of companies have made that decision.

2. Cleaning Up or Starting Over

By now, almost every company has some sort of presence somewhere online. Here are some things to think about when learning about your existing presence, and deciding whether to consolidate the channels or just blow everything up and start from scratch.

3. The Budget Question

Everyone has a CFO to explain the spending to. Whether it’s headcount, ad agencies or creative development, you need to come up with a reasonable estimate for how much to ask for. Here is some guidance for that deck for the person with the checkbook.

4. Picking a Starting Line for Your Program - The Initial Audit

The old saying holds true - If you don’t know where you are, you can’t get to where you are going. Here are some expensive, moderate, cheap and free tools you may want to look at.

5. The Training Process

Seminars, agencies, consultants, blogs, etc... Everyone has an opinion on what you need to know to be a successful social media marketer. Here's what to look for in a community management team, and what you need to teach them.

6. The Planning Process - Where to begin?

You wouldn’t show up for a TV shoot without a script, so why start a social campaign without a blueprint? We’ll go through some things you need to think about when integrating social into your overall marketing plan.

7. 57 Channels and Nothing’s On

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Slideshare, Flickr, etc....How do you possible choose? We'll go through a few tips for prioritizing.

8. Generating Momentum Internally

The beginning of every program relies on buy-in from your own employees. Here are some ways other companies have gotten internal involvement from day one.

9. Creating Benchmarks

What does progress look like? How do you know if you are attracting the right fans? We’ll go through a few ways to develop metrics and evaluate your success rate.

10. Harnessing the Love of your Customers

Whether you realize it or not, you have super-fans out there. Here’s how to find and reach out to them.

If you have other topic suggestions, or want to contribute your own experience, just let us know.

Doing more with less... seriously!

Thanks to @jess3 for showing us this video from an architecture student in Hong Kong who, because of the space and apartments being so expensive, decided to design a 344 sq. ft. apartment that has 24 totally livable rooms. This kind of focused-highly-analytical-thinking is exactly the kind of thing that sets our brains on fire. After watching this I'm thinking in a totally different way about 300sq of poorly used space in my basement. :-)

Who is Social3i

Check out this SlideShare Presentation for the complete story.

Social3i company info

View more presentations from social3i.

Mixing Social Marketing Into Your Email Program

Our colleague Travis Young, who does a ton of email marketing, alerted us to this upcoming announcement from Mailchimp. As social marketing evolves from the fringes of the budget, and becomes even more integrated with all parts of the marketing mix, we expect to see more features like this move into programs and services you've been using for years.

Mailchimp's upcoming release involves social marketing features that you would have had to add by hand yourself before, if you even thought to include such integration. So, this release is unique in the blending of social features with all the rest of the stuff they already do – and the changing the expectations of interacting with email marketing. Microsoft’s new Outlook 2010 features, and existing plugins already focus on the social aspect of knowing those you email with.

The main point may be their quote, "There are real people behind all those email address on your mailing list, and MailChimp's new features will help you get to know them.” Let us know if you are using email programs with similar opportunities to integrate social with email.

75 million reasons you should be considering mobile marketing programs

There Are 75 Million US Adults On The Mobile Internet, More Than Half Of Them Daily. So says new Pew Internet Study.

Here are a few relevant data points from the report:

• 82% of Pew survey respondents said they owned a mobile phone. That translates into roughly 187 million, out of 228 million US adults overall.
• 38% – 40% of that population goes online from their handsets, or about 75 million people (for 18-29 yr olds that number is 65%)
• 55% of mobile Internet users are online via their mobile phones at least once a day and 43% are access the mobile Internet “several times a day.”

Just for fun - The LeBron Sweepstakes Takes Social Center Stage

Who's the big winner in the LeBron sweepstakes? No, I don't mean what city - what YouTube video is getting the most views for it's enterprising young artists? Any favorites?

Social Marketing Resources for Businesses

It's taken a few years, but the social media argument for companies is no longer about "If" and more about "How." For good or for bad, articles are popping up everywhere and it's hard to know what's coming from someone with experience, and what is written by someone trying to hit SEO keywords.

Well, this collection of social media resource links is pretty solid. It was aggregated by a group called Social Beach Training, based in the UK. We don't know these guys at all, but I hope when I'm in England this year, I'll be able to stop by and say hi. If you have more resources to share, send them on to us and we'll include them.

Join Us Next Week at NWEN's eIQ - Social Media for Start-ups

Next week, we'll be at the Northwest Entrepreneur Network, for an event focused on coaching entrepreneurs, authors, small business owners and designers on how to leverage their social marketing presences. We've been asked to cover the following topics, and will likely go a little deeper since this crowd is generally pretty advanced.

• The basics: key terms, the players, and success stories.
• How companies can build and manage their reputation through social networking sites.
• The role of blogs (your own and outsiders’) in spreading news about your organization.
• Why and how to put together your own audio/video content and build an audience for it.
• Measuring the success of your social networking efforts.

When: Wednesday, July 14 , 3:30 - 5:30pm | Where: Williams-Helde Marketing Communication 711 Sixth Avenue North, Suite 200 Seattle, Washington 98109.

Hope to see you there.

What Social Channels Do I Need to Be On?

Facebook, LinkedIn, Vimeo, Slideshare, Twitter, etc.... the list of social media channels you or your company can participate in goes on endlessly. So if you are an established business, start-up, or individual entrepreneur, how do you know where you need a presence?

Simple answer: There's no simple answer. Each one of these channels has features that cater to specific audiences. Some of them even frown upon signing up as a business. But while it's impossible to try to maintain an active presence in more than 3-7 places, there are a few good reasons for owning your brand name on as many pieces of online real estate as possible. First, there's the SEO benefit of owning the url's of your brand name. But even more importantly, it's a good way to defend yourself against nefarious people or unhappy customers who want to develop their own "presence" on one of these channels. Another thing to remember is the power of joining forums in your industry. Getting your brand name, or your CEO's name, known as a thought leader in the places you are already reading, is a strong way to build influence.

As a social marketing consultancy, it's important for us to test just about everything out. So we probably have a broader presence than a normal person or company needs. But we need to understand what channels work best for retailers, organizations, charities, authors, B2B companies and more.

Now, this process can become pretty unwieldy, so we like using DandyID to keep track of everything for us. In addition to consolidating all of our presences in one place, it also has some pretty nifty widgets if you want to install your list directly into other channels.

So, we of course have a robust presence on LinkedIn:

• LinkedIn - Andy
• LinkedIn - Xavier

But here are a few other places we've been setting up and testing lately. Not all of them have content yet. Keep up with our DandyID spot to follow where we add more channels.

Let us know what else you think we should be testing, and we'll give it a whirl.

How Much Should I Be Spending on Social Marketing?

(Part 2 in our series on "Getting Started in Social Marketing")

Over the last year, just about every brand has accepted and embraced that Social Marketing is a “must have,” not a “nice to have” program in their marketing arsenal. But one aspect that still faces boardroom controversy is how much to actually spend.

Remarkably, while any simple google search can return 3500 articles on “How to make social media work for you,” there are relatively few resources that give you hard data to take to the CEO. Based on our experiences, and a few pieces of data we’ve pulled from research reports, here’s at least a framework you can work around.

The Top Line Overview

On a very high level, social marketing has moved out of the “Discretionary Spending” or “Special Projects” line item of the overall budget and garnered its own classification. Qualitiatively, we hear people spending around 5% to 10% of the advertising budget on something that involves “social.” Some reports, such as this one from Avenue Social claim 3-6% of overall ad spending. (Note that the number is 3-6% of ad spending, not marketing spending.)

Now it’s hard to decide how much that number is changing in 2010, since a Coremetrics report about 2008 spending found, “78% marketing professionals saw that social media marketing was a way of getting an edge on their competitors. However, just 7.7% percent of their total online marketing spend was allocated to it compared to 33 percent to online advertising and 28 percent on online promotion design and implementation.” Also notable, is the statistic that

just 10% of companies are not engaging in any social media activity whatsoever.

Comparison to Your Overall Marketing Budget

One thing we can’t forget about is the size of your company’s overall budget. In 2008, the average cost of TV production for a 30 second spot was around $303,000 just to create it. If this is the scenario in which you market, it’s pretty easy to cut development of one spot and suddenly have $25k per month to spend on staffing an internal social marketing team.

Some companies are paralyzed by a lack of resources, accoriding to this report at Marketing Charts. The report says that more than half of companies (54%) say resourcing is a significant problem, and 9 out of 10 businesses (90%) say social media is taking up more time internally than a year ago. This indicates that before launching a social media program, some sort of staffing and training initiative is necessary.

The ROI Question

The research at Marketing Charts also found, “That many companies are experimenting with social media without yet reaping any measurable benefits. Only one-fourth of companies say that they have gained “real, tangible value” from social media, whereas 60% say that they have gained some benefit but nothing concrete.”

But the Econsultancy study found that, “More than half (52%) of companies who are heavily involved in social media marketing say that they have gained real value, compared with only 13% of companies who have “experimented but not done much.”

One way to interpret this data, is that companies need to spend money tomake money, and those that invest and make Social Marketing a real part of the budget are rewarded.

Brands of All Size Increasing Budgets

Forrester estimates at least give a perspective, if not actionable insight, to what the market as a whole will be doing.

They say, “B2B interactive marketing spending will climb to nearly $4.8 billion in 2014 as interactive channels continue to grab a larger share of the marketing pie. B2B marketers will continue to invest heavily in paid search but will also begin to invest in display advertising and emerging marketing tactics such as social and mobile marketing. In order to make the most of these investments, B2B marketers should focus on creating online customer interactions — not just driving leads — and develop a central team to direct emerging media strategy.”

So with all these considerations and estimates, at least 2 companies are coming out and talking about what kind of bets their placing. Australian Discount Airline Jetstar says it will direct 40% of its marketing budget to social media. “We’ve conducted some very successful marketing and PR campaigns via social media in the past 18 months, including YouTube and Twitter, and the response has been phenomenal,” said David May, Jetstar’s head of marketing.

While the top marketers in the world aren’t going to go up to 40%, their increases are becoming significant. Ad Age reports that Unilever says, “In the U.S., where people are spending 25% of their time in some sort of digital engagement, then you should be proportionate. ... You will find that we will be in the 20% areas in markets like the U.S. And you will find we'll be in the single [digits] in markets that are less developed. The company spent only 4% of its $864 million in measured media last year on internet spending, according to Kantar Media, and even doubling wouldn't get it to 20% this year.” However roughly 8-10% spend on digital indicates significant dedication to social. Likewise, P&G, which also doubled its measured U.S. internet spending last year to $100 million, estimates digital is above 10% of its marketing budget.

The Net Net

In conclusion, it’s become fair to estimate that an established company with integrated marketing campaigns, will be spending from 3-10% of their overall marketing budget on social marketing. That number may encompass full-time employees serving roles in community management, the licensing of analytics tools, and application and mobile development. But the good ROI tracking that comes with significant budget outlays should drive crisper, more efficient budget analysis in 2011.

Your 10 Slides When Pitching Social Marketing Internally

(Part 1 of our series: Getting Started in Social Marketing)

I love the end of June. The dog days of summer bring a combination of family vacations, kids home from school, and weather that makes it hard to stay locked underneath uv lights. Budget wise, it also means the end of Q2, or even more importantly, H1. This is the time companies look into their crystal balls and decide where to scale back, and where to increase spending.

We’ve heard the same question for the last few years at this time. It always starts somethng like, “I know we want to do something in social this quarter, but I just don’t know what. And I don’t know how to free up a huge amount of budget for it.” The biggest difference between 2007 and 2010 though, is by now SOMEONE inside your organization has likely launched a Facebook page or Twitter profile. The number of employees actively blogging about your industry is significantly larger. And the press has caught up, joyfully adding employee blog and twitter feeds for their background research.

So if you are looking for some simple message points for a powerpoint deck to take control of your social marketing, here are a few sections I'd go with.

1) Where are we? It seems like such an easy question, but I’ve gotten solicitiations from people asking us to “start” a social medi aprogram for them. Meanwhile, they haven’t gone thru the due diligence to check all around the web to see where the company or its customers already have an official or unofficial presence. Start with the audit.

2) Who are we? Locked in the file cabinet in every employee’s office is the official positioning statement and messaging of the company. It’s great that everyone internally has a vision of what they want the company to stand for. But then there’s what the public thinks your message and positioning are. If these two things are wildly divergent, it’s a good place to start the process.

3) What are our competitors doing? Is this an area where you are losing market share by not paying attention the same way your arch enemies do, or is it a place to gain market share by leaving them in the dust?

4) Who do we copy? Let’s face it. Even by stealing money from print, radio or TV, you’re still going to be hard pressed to find 6 figures to put into a quarterly social program. So before handing the keys off to an agency, why not peruse the efforts of these agencies and see what works for you. For example, check out Comcast and Alaska Air for customer support, REI is integrating social and traditional advertising, and Starbucks is taking customer feedback and trying to make a multi-national company feel like the coffee shop next store. Then there are your own local pubs, wineries, taco trucks and snowboard shops making this look easy. Put together a list so your bosses can show that this isn’t such a scary proposition.

5) Who SHOULDN’T we copy? The real trick in budget requests is finding that number that doesn’t seem luxurious, but also allows everyone to sleep at night. Find examples of companies that are completely blowing it, either by a lack of quality, or an obvious excess amount of time being spent on negligble return. Two quick eamples – search for “Nestle Facebook” or “Motrin Momy Blogger.”

6) Who wants to own this? Social marketing isn’t easy. If you are doing a good job, you should get overrun with comunication from your influential customers and those who want to evangelize. So where should this live, should be it cross-functional, and how senior should the leaders of the program be? Getting the effort spread across the company turns this from a marketing campaign to a corporate philosophy. Also, you probably wouldn’t ask a 21 year old intern to shoot your TV campaign, so why would you put them in charge of your forward facing communication with customers? And who cares what division someone is in if they are the happiest, most dedicated employee in the company. Find the people who care most, then figure out how to set them loose.

7) How we know we’re successful? Every company has a set of metrics that go deeper than sales and expenses. And there are now more than 50 tools to measure the level of conversation about your brand in social channels. If you can get a little eductaed about what these tools can tell you, you can tell the powers that be exactly what you want to get measured on.

8) How does this fit in our current Marketing Plan? Your company has been marketing for years. It’s been successful, or you wouldn’t have a job. So don’t ask social marketing to go live in it’s own silo, away from the talented folks who have been driving messaging, positioning, campaigns and advertising for a long time.

9) How much is it going to cost? Is this a $500k annual project, or can it be done with existing resources and some consulting help? Do you have creative people to throw at the project, or is this going to take a whole new development shop? Can you manage the community aspect with current people, or will you need to bring in and train up a set of Engagement Leads? If the questions above have been well-answered, this kind of falls out pretty easily.

10) Selling the dream. End the deck by showing what the future looks like. Happy customers evangelizing the company, insightful employees supporting their employer, a thriving marketplace where creativity and ideas reign supreme. Unfortunately, most people start with this slide and never sell the details.

Nike, Hyundai, ESPN Leveraging World Cup for Increased Buzz

According to Adweek, Nike has continued to leverage their World Cup commercial, "Write the Future" to generate an increase in the amount of buzz about their brand. Again, they have been able to do this without the expensive need to actually sponsor the World Cup.

Table is from Adweek.com.

It's interesting to surmise whether Nike is interesting in continuing trying to leverage the ad, or if it's now just riding a wave on the downhill side of the curve. With just 4 teams left, and the U.S. eliminated more than 10 days ago, buzz for the entire event has scaled back to the soccer enthusiasts and interested Germans, Uruguayans, Spanish and Dutch.

The most pain next week will come in meeting rooms at both the ad agencies and social media firms hired by Adidas. What would otherwise be an impressive showing and reason to celebrate must have come at a price exponentially higher than the price paid by Nike.

If you aren't one of the 18,000,000 people to have seen the 3:00 version of the ad, which Nike cleverly launched on YouTube first, check it out here: