Defining Social CRM

March 7th, 2012

Social CRM is a topic that we have covered at length on this blog in the past, looking at definitions, case study examples and feedback from Social CRM events that we attend and speak at.

In our experience, the one defining characteristic of Social CRM is the range of misconceptions and misunderstandings about the core elements involved. Therefore, we have decided to pull together this post to cover off three of the key questions that we come up against when discussing Social CRM, and then build on the focus over the coming weeks.

1. What is Social CRM?:

Perhaps one of the best definitions that I’ve come across on Social CRM was from Esteban Kolsky - Founder at ThinkJar, who spoke at Social CRM 2011, London, which I attended last year. He stated: “Companies tend to start using social media to talk at their customers not to listen to them” he then defined CRM as a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improve human interactions in a business environment.

This is a good reflection of how many organisations start out on the road to Social CRM (jumping straight into a tactical approach and talking ‘at’ customers but not listening ‘to’ customers), in comparison to where they really need to be, which is simply to focus on improving real interactions with customers.

In practical terms this means the organisation will need to implement a system and related technologies, built around an overarching ‘business’ strategy. And by business strategy, I mean a strategy that is developed with the whole business in mind, understood by the business and executed by the business.

2. Why does Social CRM matter?

The key here is taking CRM beyond a marketing or customer services specialism, and building a philosophy that translates across the organisation. If Social CRM is purely a function of customer services we are missing the point. In today’s socially connected world, customers can intersect and engage with an organisation at many different points, and do not follow traditional channels of communication. Therefore, the Social CRM strategy must be implemented across the business to succeed.

This has been evidenced on many occasions by customers discussing organisations with their networks, forming opinions and influencing others through their experiences. This is the heart of social conversation and the essence of a social business. If an organisation’s Social CRM strategy cannot positively impact this process then it is failing, and to succeed it must be implemented across the board. For example, your sales staff maybe excellent relationship managers, but if your service staff are rude and unresponsive, the overall impact will be negative.

Furthermore, we now learn from and engage with our customers more than ever before, but we can also learn from the data that social and online activities offer to us. It is important however to manage this data and put it to use, not all of the data will be useful, in fact much of it will just be noise, but social CRM offers us the opportunity to learn about customers, process these learnings and engaging accordingly.

3. How do you develop your Social CRM strategy?

If we consider that Social CRM is a method of translating social activities into the fundamentals of CRM, and in turn we understand that Social CRM is part of the evolution towards the development of a wider social business then we are half way there. However, we also need to focus on the customer need, which is not to be a fan or friend of the organisation, but to derive value from his/her engagement with the organisation. As David Meerman Scott said: ‘Nobody cares about your products, people care about their problems. Customers do not want a relationship with your business, they want the benefits a relationship can offer to them’‘.

With that in mind, we need to translate our strategy into deliverables, and according to Kolsky, there are four key functions of Social CRM:
1. Community management (listening and engaging usefully)
2. Social analytics engine (gathering and processing data)
3. Actionable layer unit (identifying and actioning learnings)
4. System-of-record integration layer (Integrating learnings into the business)

It is also important to note that a key part of Social CRM is engaging with humans as humans. Machines talking to humans rarely works, especially in terms of a meaningful conversation. Therefore, remember it’s not about the technology, it’s about the person using it and the conversation. If we lose sight of the fundamentals and hide behind automated monitoring and response it will be the equivalent of a business leaving an answer machine to deal with customers, it won’t learn or react, it will just repeat.

Further reading

You can review our previous Social CRM posts on Social CRM 2011 London here, and Vikki Chowney at eConsultancy also recently did an excellent checklist on social customer service.

If you want to learn more on the subject, and speak to those organisations and agencies involved in Social CRM, I would also recommend The Social Customer event in London on March 29th, run by Our Social Times.

Posted in Blog, Content, Industry events, Liberate Media news, Social media, Social networking, Trends and research, Useful resources | 3 Comments »

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Do you work remotely? 60% of office-based employees will be in the next decade

February 23rd, 2012

A survey by Virgin Media Business suggests that 60% of office-based employees will be ‘regularly’ working from home within the next decade, thanks to technological advances in the workplace.

The research was carried out between 12 December and 16 December 2011, and surveyed 5,000 directors and business-owners from UK companies with 100+ employees. It also noted that face-to- face meetings will soon become a thing of the past, according to 72% of respondents. 62% also expect to commute less thanks to remote working.

You might say that Virgin would want us to work from home as they can provide the infrastructure, and you would be right, but that doesn’t detract from the main issues.

Tony Grace, Chief Operating Officer of Virgin Media Business also made some strong points: “There’s a change coming to the way we work. Remote working isn’t anything new, but with technology providing the right tools for the job, the acceptance that it will soon be the norm is.

“Businesses are already getting fit for purpose by investing in cloud-based software, virtual private networks or investing in new tools such as Unified Communications to ensure that remote teams remain connected and engaged. The growth in video and social media across corporate networks is also supporting this migration away from the traditional office confines; the importance to underlying network infrastructure once more comes under the spotlight.

“This raises questions about the way businesses currently use office space. We see the office of the future being a lot smaller, desks set-up for hot-desking and a workforce that can easily interchange from working in the office to working from home or at a satellite office. Underpinning all of this will be a reliable network helping companies to manage their staff and resources.

“There will always be a case for having a main office, but if you can make your staff happy by allowing them to work remotely, reduce their commuting time and give staff the freedom to work in a way that suits them, then why wouldn’t you take it.”

As Grace says, there are many reasons to embrace remote working, and at Liberate Media we have had a remote working policy from day 1. After six years it has worked very well. We offer a central office as well as work spaces elsewhere, but the majority prefer to work from home or wherever their meeting is going to be.

It takes a little getting used to at first, but once settled in we found productivity went through the roof, and generally the team is much more efficient and relaxed, which in turn shows in our work.

The old arguments of ‘I miss working with people’ are becoming less relevant as it is replaced by ‘i can get so much more done’ and in our job we are on the move so much that we are seldom in the office, even if we want to be.

The fact is, economic, ecological and modern working practises are pushing organisations towards remote working, so unless it’s an issue of training and supervision, i would highly recommend it.

You may say it’s easy for us as we are a small business, but there are also examples of remote working succeeding at the biggest organisations, such as BT, HSBC and O2.

British Telecom began a telework scheme in 1986 and now has 15,000 people working that way, out of their 92,000 employees. BT argues that it saves nearly £6,000 a year by allowing employees to work from home, they take fewer sick days and are 20% more productive.

HSBC also confirms 15,000 of its UK bank staff have the ability to work from home.

O2 recently allowed 3,000 employees to work from home for the day, which is a quarter of its 12,000-strong workforce.

According the The Next Web, O2 is hoping that the trial will act as a test-bed for future scenarios beyond the Olympics, with flexible working helping to increase efficiency, productivity and innovation.

O2 will look at reductions in its electricity usage, CO2 emissions and travel time, and the company’s three year sustainability plan pledges to help over 125,000 business employees work flexibly, and collectively save over 500,000 miles of travel.

Posted in Blog, Blogging, Emerging technology, Social media | No Comments »

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Are we really still talking about PR vs search vs social?

February 17th, 2012

Warning: rant coming…

First of all, this is not meant to be an attack on the recent post, titled ‘PR Agencies: Adapt or Die‘, on the Forrester blog. It made some good points, but it was also the spark that re-ignited my ongoing frustration with the industry that perpetuates this ‘x vs Y approach’, or ‘we’re better at it than you’ nonsense, which in my opinion misses the point entirely.

Yes, the traditional PR agency needs to adapt, and the same has been said for many years. The smart ones already have, and the others, well…they are slowly learning why they should.

In that time the search agency became all powerful, then became a digital agency and is now trying to redefine itself, and it’s a similar tale across the industry.

The reality for PR agencies, social agencies, digital agencies, search agencies and the vast majority of agencies, is that simply offering one element of a much wider remit of brand communications is not enough.

You cannot expect to live by one skill alone any more, and it’s pretty clear that brands are not willing to pay five agencies to do five roles that one should really be able to accomplish. Is it too much to ask that brand communicators should be able to establish emotional connections with customers, without the client needing to worry about where each level of service implementation comes from?

Some may argue that mobile is a specialism and one worth maintaining outside of the brand communications sphere of skills, and although it could be argued that is true for now, it was true of search and social at one time. Therefore, the simple truth is we as consumers absorb media quickly, and expect our services, brands and conversations to be cross-media very quickly, so why shouldn’t we expect the same of our agencies?

Getting back to my point, the issue is not about whether PR lives or dies, in its traditional form it has been struggling for 10 years. Search is losing its slice of the pie as skills go in-house and revenues tumble, and social agencies need to up-skill across the board to remain competitive, or risk being stranded as a specialist. So the issue is not so much who will win, but what will win.

By what, I mean that the agency of the future is not search or social or PR or even advertising. It’s more likely to be earned or paid media, and even earned and paid. This agency, let’s call it simply a brand communications agency (although I realise that has negative connotations traditionally) can do all of the above. This agency will be the winner, and yes that will upset many business models and eat into carefully laid profit plans, but that is the reality I see, and I don’t mean this agency will need to hold all skills in-house.

So yes, PR agencies as a general rule don’t do digital very well, this is not news, but it’s what PR, social, search and digital will become that is much more interesting.

Finally, a note to our regular readers. My apologies if you have seen this same rant in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and now 2012, it seems change takes time.

Posted in Blog, Blogging, Content, Digital communications, PR, Social media, Useful resources | 1 Comment »

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Tweet limit impacts Social CRM effectiveness - just ask O2

February 1st, 2012

The development of Social CRM has been well documented over the last few years, and we have written a number of posts on the subject, sharing Liberate Media’s experiences of Social CRM campaigns.

However, a very real issue in the development of Social CRM, at least in terms of Twitter usage, was highlighted last week by O2 who exceeded their daily limit while attempting to respond to a breaking communications crisis. O2 asked Twitter for an extension on the amount of tweets it could send, (Twitter’s daily limit is 250 direct messages a day, and 1,000 tweets) but this was refused.

O2′s PR and social media campaigns manager, James Paterson, confirmed the issue at last week’s 1-2-1 Digital Strategy Summit, run by Marketing Week. In fact, he confirmed that O2 actually accrued the same amount of ‘mentions’ in one day as it does in a normal week.

If you are not familiar with the issue, O2 was attempting to respond to the news that user’s mobile phone numbers were being leaked to websites that they visited.

In the Marketing Week piece, Paterson said it was important that O2 did “not stay quietly in [its] shell” as news circulated about the data leaks and that the company employed a strategy immediately to respond to user questions and communicate that it was investigating the issue.

The mobile operator did utilise other tactics as part of its Social CRM response, i.e. preparing a “Q&A” blog post to explain the technical reasons behind the data leak and to apologise for the concern caused.

Paterson said: “We wanted to respond to as many people as possible with fair answers. In the past we may have just given a Q&A to the well-known media outlets, but our people understand that if you answer queries and communicate to people on social media straight away, problems tend to be resolved more quickly.”

However, although O2 followed a clear strategy for its response, it was hindered by Twitter’s account limit.

Twitter has commented on the limit issue: “Limits alleviate some of the strain on the behind-the-scenes part of Twitter, and reduce downtime and error pages. For the sake of reliability, we’ve placed some limits on account actions like following, API requests, direct messages, and updates.”

“The daily update limit is further broken down into smaller limits for semi-hourly intervals. Retweets are counted as updates.”

These rules obviously reduce the effectiveness of Social CRM response mechanisms for large brands, although in fairness Twitter was not designed as a CRM channel, therefore it has no responsibility to look out for such problems.

However, as Twitter continually looks towards brands to bolster its revenue strategy, it’s likely that it will not only expand this function, but also charge for it, a charge that i’m sure the majority of brands would be willing to pay.

In this instance O2 responded to a breaking issue well, and tried to be open by answering as many of its customer tweets as possible, but this was quickly curtailed when Twitter would not allow any further tweets that day.

This issue, and the others that are sure to follow, further highlight a real flaw in many social CRM strategies, while also drawing attention to a revenue opportunity for Twitter. If Twitter is not already working on a paid response they are likely to be jumping on it rapidly in the near future.

Posted in Blog, Blogging, Digital communications, Digital media, Emerging technology, PR, Social media, Social networking, Useful resources | No Comments »

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When social media bites back

January 25th, 2012

It’s been an interesting week for a couple of major brands that have found themselves in a rather sticky social media situation.

Late last week, McDonalds felt the full force of a misfiring campaign when its idea to use a promoted tweet campaign, supported by hashtags, to highlight real life stories from farmers that grow its food backfired in a big way. Oddly the process started well, when McDonalds used the hashtag #MeetThe Farmers, which was a great choice as it focused on the issue rather than promoting the brand.

Unfortunately, or perhaps as a result of an overzealous brand marketer, the hashtag was changed to #McDStories and within an hour it had been hijacked to talk about unpleasant stories from McDonald’s customers, and instead of charming stories from hard working farmers, McDonalds received a stream of less than desirable comments.

You can see some of the tweets in this story from the Daily Mail.

Then, this week, after a rather moving letter in the ‘consumer champions‘ section of the Guardian (which you can see in full below),  LA Fitness was forced to back down on a contract dispute with a customer. But it didn’t make it easy on itself.

In a nutshell, the story goes like this: LA Fitness had previous refused to allow a pregnant woman and her husband out of a 24 month contract after he recently lost his job, and they had moved away from the gym. She writes a letter to the Guardian’s consumer champions section, they contact LA Fitness with no favourable outcome, the story goes online, and The Twitter nation does the rest.

We all know that customer contract rules can be ridiculous, but a little bit of common sense from LA Fitness would have gone a long way to averting the communications disaster that it now finds itself in. It’s not as though it didn’t have a warning or two, and even if the customer’s tale of difficulty didn’t stir a social conscience, the contact from a broadsheet newspaper certainly should have rung alarm bells. However it was a relentless torrent of Twitter abuse that dealt the killer blow, and although LA Fitness has now refunded the couple’s money, the damage is done, and the story is accessible online for all to see.

You can read the full overview on the Wall Blog, and the original letter to the Guardian below.

Although the McDonald’s case didn’t relate to a customer issue, both cases show a real lack of understanding of how social communications work, and what it means to be a brand online. In McDonalds’ case if they had stuck to the heart of the matter, and focused on sharing stories of farmers the campaign would have probably worked. In LA Fitness’ case, if we look beyond their lack of human empathy, the knowledge that this CRM failing had gone to a national paper should have resulted in an immediate crisis communications response, without letting it go that far.

That letter as featured in the Guardian ‘consumer champions‘ section:

“My husband and I have been loyal customers of gym chain LA Fitness for six years. I am seven months pregnant, we are moving 12 miles away from the gym and don’t drive. My husband has lost his job and we are now on benefits. We can barely feed our children right now and can’t afford the two-year contract.

“Despite us sending LA Fitness a letter proving my husband has been let go from his job, his employer didn’t use the word “redundant” in the letter, so LA Fitness will not accept it as a valid reason to terminate the contract. I have been told that being pregnant entitles me only to temporarily freeze my membership. Moving away does not apply, as we need to be 20 miles from the nearest gym to cancel. We just cannot pay.“

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Google changes the rules and upsets Twitter, among others

January 12th, 2012

Earlier this week Google announced a number of changes, which apply to the U.S. only at this stage, and are designed to accelerate personal search, and move towards social search.

The three changes fall under the following categories:

First: Personal results, aimed at helping you to find more relevant to…well…you.
Second: Profiles in search, meaning you can more easily identify people you’re close to or want to follow.
Third: People and pages, which focuses on helping you to find profiles and Google+ pages related to memes or topics of interest.

The additions offer more meaningful ways to connect with people around you, straight from the search results.

This all sounds well and good, and personalising and or customising results to be more relevant can only be more positive, can’t it?

Many commentators such as the Guardian and BBC have picked up on the other side effect of these changes which is to make Google+ much more relevant. For example, when you search for information, particularly about individuals, results from the social network will be prominently displayed on the first page of results, assuming you are a member.

That makes Google+ a much more attractive social network, as users will see fewer results from outside it when they search for information.

As you might expect, Twitter has offered its opinion on the issue, as it has perhaps the most to lose. Twitter’s lead lawyer, Alex Macgillivray, called it a “bad day for the internet“, and suggested - as a former Google employee - that there would have been dissent internally “at search being warped this way“.

Twitter later made a formal statement: “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet.

“As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users.”

Others have also criticised the change, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land commented: “Search engines are supposed to send you away to the best information, even if they don’t have their own in stock. Google has previously been excellent at providing links to the most suitable information.

“Today’s change is one of the few times where I’m thinking ‘What the hell are you doing, Google?’”

Getting to the heart of the matter, Google was always going to find a way to move its social network, which is so far behind the game, to the front. Its best strategy to achieve this is to link its social network more closely to its search engine, which is after all the most popular in the U.S and Europe. But is that fair?

Google’s decision to favour Google+ posts which would not rank highly by its normal criteria (defined by the number of “authoritative” pages on the web linking to it) could suggest that it is favouring its own product in order to grow it more quickly. That in turn could breach antitrust (or competition) laws.

Twitter and Facebook content does not generally appear in Google search results because neither site provides Google with unlimited access to their content.

Twitter formerly had an agreement in which Google paid for access to index its database directly, but Twitter chose not to renew the agreement, according to a statement placed on Google+ by an official Google account, which said it was “a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments” because “they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer“.

Although these changes are likely to head to Europe eventually, the Guardian piece suggests Google may have to think twice about introducing the changes over here because it has a greater share of search in European countries, meaning a ruling on it affecting the market is more likely, and also if the changes extend to results on Android phones, then it may face more urgent calls for an antitrust investigation.

This wouldn’t be the first time that there has been a call for Google to be investigated on such grounds, but if these changes do come to Europe as expected, we could be on the verge of a few interesting legal actions.

Posted in Blog, Blogging, Content, Digital communications, Digital media, Emerging technology, PR, Social media, Social networking, Trends and research, Useful resources | No Comments »

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Do you own your social profile?

January 5th, 2012

Recently the issue of social profile ownership has come to the fore with the very public case
of Noah Kravitz, a blogger based in California who is being sued by his former employer, PhoneDog,  which is seeking damages because he failed to relinquish his Twitter account when he left the company to work for a rival.

This probably sounds ridiculous, but we have already experienced a similar case in the UK as far back as 2008, when a recruitment consultant working for Hays,  Mark Ions, was ordered to give the rights to his LinkedIn account to his former employer. The court ruled that information of a confidential nature was collected during his work and that the company deserved to have full access to his account. Conversely, last year the BBC’s chief political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg moved from the BBC to ITV and took her Twitter account, which had 58,000 followers with her. The BBC did not seek legal ownership of her account, although there was discussion of the issue elsewhere.

You may think this is a crazy conversation considering the social profiles were in the individual’s name, but the employers have a good argument if the profiles were used solely, or at least for the majority of time, for work purposes, contain work-based contacts and in effect represent the individual’s record of work-based conversations.

That’s not to say I agree with the ruling, far from it, but we need to be aware of the slow moving legal response to fast moving technologies. In other words, the law doesn’t move as quickly as social media, so expect rulings to be based on the most sensible work-based comparison, which generally would have remained the property of the employer after the employee left, e.g. customer files and or contact books. That being said, one would hope that in most cases our social profiles represent a mixture of personal and work-based discussion, so we should not see ownership battles ongoing between employers and employees, and of course this issue could have been avoided if relevant social media guidelines were in place.

It would be interesting to see the outcome of a similar case in a PR, digital or social agency, and how that might affect future norms between employers and employees across the sector. However, so far it seems common sense has prevailed, or perhaps policy has won the day.

In the current PhoneDog case, the company has said that it is taking the action because it had invested in growing the number of followers that Mr Kravitz had on Twitter and the account was its property, alleging that those followers are, in effect, a customer list and PhoneDog’s property. The company wants Kravitz to pay $340,000: $2.50 per follower per month for 18 months.

PhoneDog was quoted in the New York Times saying: “We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands.”

Jon Rettinger, President, TechnoBuffalo (Noah’s current employer) responded with the following statement: “I have remained silent on the issue, privately supporting Noah, hoping that this issue would be resolved. However, further reflection and consultation has made me realize the time for silence is over. TechnoBuffalo is a news outlet, and this situation quite clearly has become news. We stand firmly behind Noah, disagree with the frivolous suit PhoneDog has filed, and hope swift justice will be served. This equates to school yard bullying, and should be met with disgust by the world. We stand behind our employees as we would family. Noah has the full support of the Herd. I urge you all to speak up!”

A hearing in the case, PhoneDog LLC v. Kravitz, is scheduled for January 26 in San Francisco and I expect some interesting responses from organisations across the world, in terms of tightening up policies, whatever the outcome.

Posted in Blog, Blogging, Content, Digital communications, Industry events, Social media, Social networking, Trends and research | No Comments »

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YouGov 2012 consumer technology predictions

December 20th, 2011

YouGov has announced its 2012 predictions for UK consumers’ consumption and behaviour around Smart TV, smartphones, Facebook, digital newspapers and digital radio. The findings originate from a multi-country study, carried out in November 2011 with almost 13,000 respondents.

The headline statistics include:
o 15% of UK consumers say they will own a Smart TV within the next 12 months
o 86% of smartphone users ignore advertising on mobiles
o 60% of UK online population now use Facebook more than once a day
o 24% of tablet users access the web whilst in bed
o Just over one in five (22%) of 18-24 year olds have listened to the Radio via a portable radio set (including DAB)

As you can see, surprisingly only 15% of UK consumers said that they expect to purchase a connected, or ‘Smart’, TV within the next 12 months. However, that figure may not tell the whole story as people are already connecting their TV to the web via external devices, including games consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PS3, along with ‘plug in’ boxes such as Boxee.

The biggest driver for adoption of Smart TV is the availability of content, as YouGov reports 36% of UK respondents aged 18-24 said that they would make a connected TV purchase if they could watch their favourite TV content on-demand.

Dan Brilot, media consulting director at YouGov, said: “Smart content producers must continue to develop their services to make it increasingly easier for people to watch what they want, when they want, wherever they want.”

Moving onto smartphones, 40% of people own smartphones in the UK, increasing to 68% within the next upgrade cycle. However, YouGov say 86% of smartphone users ignore advertising on mobiles, meaning engagement via mobile must be useful and relevant - not broadcasted, or in other words: advertising.

In terms of digital newspapers and tablets, Russell Feldman, associate director of technology at YouGov says: “The decline of print media sales will only accelerate during 2012. Tablets and apps will increase the digital cannibalisation of paper copies as they erode more of those previously inaccessible locations to digital devices; for example, nearly one quarter (24%) of tablet users access the internet whilst in bed.”

Tablet usage is still small (currently only 4% of the UK population own one) but that number is growing and, as the market develops and new entrants such as the Kindle Fire gain traction, newspaper and magazine publishers will focus more effort on specific tablet versions of their publications.

Finally, DAB take-up hasn’t quite lived up to the initial hype. To make this happen, Dan Brilot, media consulting director at YouGov says: “The radio industry needs to educate and support consumers as they become accustomed to new ways of listening and to ensure that reach and frequency opportunities are truly maximised - not lost - in the digital age.”

Posted in Content, Digital communications, Digital media, PR, Slates, Smartphones, Social media, Trends and research, Useful resources | No Comments »

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Britain shows strong digital culture

December 14th, 2011

Ofcom’s sixth International Communications Market Report was announced today and it shows Britain’s digital culture is developing well against other countries.

According to the report, covered in the Guardian, the British spend more time online, own more Smartphones and digital video recorders and watch more television over the internet than any country on the Continent.

Breaking down the statistics, apparently the British spend an average of 746 minutes (more than 12 hours) a week online, longer than any of the world’s major economies except the U.S.

However, the UK tops the charts in terms of Smartphone use and online and digital TV viewing, as 46% of all British mobile subscribers are Smartphone users, more than in Europe and the US and up from 24% the year before. The next highest was Spain, with 45% penetration.

61% of young mobile subscribers have been able to acquire Smartphones, and one quarter of 55 to 64 year olds claim to access the internet from their phones.

The UK also tops the online TV viewing figures with 27% of Britons watching TV online every week, higher than the U.S., where the total is 23%. UK digital TV penetration is also the highest in Europe, with 97% of households receiving more than the five basic channels. France is the second highest, with 93%, and America at 87%.

The UK  leads the field in buying online, as 79% ordered goods and services. The Dutch are the next most likely to make it to the checkout, with 74% spending online.

Considering our lower broadband penetration (The UK’s broadband penetration is 74%, where as France has reached 77%, Canada 83% and the Netherlands 89%) and often patchy mobile service outside of urban centres, the figures show that the British as a nation have not only accepted digital, but are making it a strong part of our culture in terms of communication, leisure and retail habits.

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CMI B2B Content marketing report review

December 6th, 2011

The B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Budgets, Benchmarks and Trends report, was published yesterday by the Content Marketing Institute in the U.S., led by its founder Joe Pulizzi.

We usually try to focus on UK/Euro stats on this blog, but I found the data in this piece to be particularly interesting. You can see the full findings here, and the sample of 1,092 marketers was taken in August 2011, and focused on how well B2B marketers are achieving their goals when it comes to content marketing, and how much has changed in the past year.

The 2011 study follows the 2010 piece of the same name and therefore allows for comparison between this year and last year.

In brief, the report shows:

Usage and effectiveness
• 9 out of 10 organisations market with content marketing
• On average, B2B marketers employ eight different content marketing tactics to achieve their goals. The most popular tactics are: (see graph below for full breakdown)
- Article posting (79%)
- Social media (excluding blogs) (74%)
- Blogs (65%)
- eNewsletters (63%)
- case studies (58%)
- in-person events (56%)

• Marketers are using content marketing to support multiple business goals, led by:
- brand awareness (69%)
- customer acquisition (68%)
- lead generation (67%)
- customer retention/loyalty (62%)

The least widely employed goal for content marketing is lead management/nurturing.

Measurement
• Web traffic is the most widely used success metric (58%). However, this year, sales lead
quality (49%) is the second-highest used metric (versus direct sales in the previous study).

Budget
• Marketers, on average, spend over a quarter of their marketing budget on content marketing
• 60% report that they plan to increase their spend on content marketing over the next 12 months.

Challenges
The greatest reported challenge is “producing the kind of content that engages prospects
and customers” (41% of respondents). And nearly the same percentage of respondents in 2011 as in 2010 reported that “producing enough content” (20%) and “budget to produce content” (18%) are their greatest challenges in content marketing.

While in-person events and webinars are still seen as the most effective tactics, on average, the following ranked notably higher in perceived effectiveness compared to the 2010 report:
• Blogs: 45% increase
• Case studies: 32% increase
• Videos: 36% increase
• Webinars/webcasts: 25% increase

The challenges section will resonate with many marketers, identifying points that will continue to test brands of all types, specifically: producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers, producing enough content, and budgeting to produce content, which is difficult enough without considering those organisations that have little or no experience of the resource required to produce high quality and engaging content in a consistent way.

Of the tactics, it was a bit of a shock to see blogs coming out highest in terms of perceived effectiveness compared to 2010. The general trend has been away from blogs, but perhaps this is a reflection of quality beginning to tell over quantity, as those that have actually put the effort into B2B blogs are now seeing the return over the ‘me too’ blogs that see very little in either response or effort.

Measurement is always a prickly subject, and it was no surprise to see web traffic ranking as the most popular, although sales lead quality is beginning to show a little more relevance for those B2B businesses putting the time in to identify metrics and better understand opportunities and outcomes.

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