Online Communities - A Strategic Marketing Channel: Learn how leading companies like Nike, CNN and Intel are building online communities and strategically leveraging the latest web 2.0 technologies to proactively engage their customers, drive product innovation and build loyalty across their customer base and partner networks.
Barry Tallis, Solutions Consulting Director, Jive Software
A topic that is very popular with The OMS crowd. Standing room only. Barry tells us that this will not be about the technologies, but he will focus on strategy and tactics. The big question is how to get started? Step 1: Start listening to what people are saying about you, on twitter for example. Once you figure out what these conversations are, then you can come up with a strategy.
The marketing aspect of online communities.
Most marketing money is being spent on awareness. The optimal target is telling somebody something once and then they tell all their friends. We tend to believe friends when it comes to advise. Blogs, micro blogs, rss all flow into the first part of the marketing funnel (awareness). An online marketing community actually can flow to all categories in the marketing funnel.
The business case for Online community
- Gain Insights - Mine community content & identify experts
- Boost Loyalty - Members remain clients 50% longer and revisit your site 9x as often
- Drive Sales - Members purchase twice as often and 5x more than the average client
- Gain Control - Communities will form around your solution whether you choose to host them or not. Using this approach can allow user-generated content that will define the longer tail keywords. Communities also drive keywords. What are people really talking about and/or interested in? and how can I use that information in my SEO strategy?
Types of Communities
- Loyalty
- Enthusiasts
- Innovations
- Partner
- Developer
- Event
- Education
- Support
Case Studies
- Customer Engagement - Nike
- Provides a platform for users with similar interests to connect with each other
- They offer links letting users submit the content to Digg, Delicious, Facebook, etc…
- They can download their running stats to a website and setup challenges to others
- Original intent of the site was for support
- Users took control by issuing challenges
- Nike adjusted their strategy to allow this type of discussion
- Through this, they found out the arm band slips when it gets wet and product improvement ensued
- Now ownership of the site is solely user centric
- Results
- 40% of not product owners when joining the community eventually purchased the product.
- 500,000 members
Q & A
- How do you address your reputation when it comes to Social Media?
- Embrace and learn from it. There might be an uncomfortable situation at first, but properly addressing these issues will benefit you in the long run
- Thoughts on strategies for lesser known brands
- Embrace current online communities
- If no one wants to join your community what do you do?
- Best practices conversation starters
- Hire out initial content (footnoted)
- Make sure you reinforce the value on why they are there.