Social Media + Net Promoter = ROI

info@netpromoter.com — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:04:22 GMT

Should Leboutin's new cosmetically-enhanced Barbie be our Net Promoter mascot? Read on to find out...

Head over to the online Barbie store and you’ll no longer see Barbie’s infamous fat ankles. Thanks to recent laments by celebrity bootmaker Christian Louboutin, the offending ankles have been mercifully subjected to plastic surgery.

What you will find over at the Barbie site though is some smart use of social media (online media that supports social interaction and user contributions). Specifically, you can go “social shopping” and co-browse the site in realtime with your remote Facebook friends and Twitter followers to share shopping advice and recommendations.

The result? An expectation-beating e-commerce experience that drives sales. Brands using social media to enhance the online customer experience have seen sales jump by 10%+ (see here for a fabulous compendium of evidence). In fact, a recent test of the social media feature on the Barbie store saw sales rise by 15%, with a 50% rise in average order value.

With its Barbie store, Mattel is part of the vanguard of brands using Net Promoter logic with social media to drive sales. The logic is simple - use social media to offer an expectation-beating online experience (the key variable driving your Net Promoter Score) and then monetize the result immediately with e-commerce.

It’s simple, it’s smart and it solves two challenges faced by Net Promoter and Social Media. First, “How do I get ROI on my Net Promoter investment fast?” Second, “How do I monetize my social media investment?” The answer, fusing social media with e-commerce and Net Promoter logic to deliver expectation-beating experiences that can be immediately monetized through e-commerce, may turn out to be your ROI solution.

Not all social media experiences can be monetized directly, and nor should they, but where they can they provide a fast business case for social media and Net Promoter investment. Take a look at how other brands are using “social commerce” (social media + e-commerce) with Net Promoter logic to monetize social media and drive sales, and ask yourself a simple question: How could we make social media pay with Net Promoter?

P&G, Nine West, and Best Buy walking the customer-centric talk and beating expectations by making e-commerce convenient and social with Facebook stores
Dell, beating their followers expectations on Twitter, by offering exclusive deals on their "Deal Feed" - and selling $7m+ of gear
Carrefour, the world's largest hypermarket retailer doing the same thing in Facebook, offering expectation-beating exclusive deals on their Deal Feed to their fans
Burberry showing how luxury brands can harness social media, with a ground-breaking Art of the Trench "user generated, brand curated" gallery linked to their e-commerce store
The Limited US fashion retail chain offering the ultimate in customer convenience, enabling people to buy directly from their social media newsfeed, with a newsfeed store on Facebook
Dell again, with Dell Swarm beating expectations with a nifty Group Buy feature - buy together with your social network - the more people who buy, the cheaper the price
Amazon beating expectations again their new Universal Wishlist service and Tag-Based and Contrast Reviews

Now, get over to the Mattel site and check out Barbie’s ankles with your friends....

Social Media / 10 Brands Doing it Right

info@netpromoter.com — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:10:43 GMT

How much time do your colleagues spend chatting with friends on Facebook, brushing up their résumé on LinkedIn, perusing photos of last night’s party on Flickr or just tweeting t-shirt slogans at Twitter whilst wiling away the hours on YouTube?

Social media. It’s a business bane, a time-bandit guaranteed to suck productivity and focus from your organization. Remember that first rule of corporate survival? Don’t make me responsible for what I can’t control. You can’t control what happens on social media (content sharing) or social networking (contact and information sharing) sites, so just don’t go there. And forget any upside; if Google can’t make money from it’s social media video sharing megasite YouTube (it can’t), what hope do the rest of us have. Better block those sites.

Sure, a healthy dose of business skepticism is advised in the faddish world of social media and social networking (remember MySpace or Friendster anyone?). But by donning our Net Promoter goggles, a viable and sustainable business model for social media begins to emerge.

From a Net Promoter perspective, business success is driven by delivering expectation-beating experiences that result in increased loyalty and referral value of customers. So if social media can either help deliver remarkable expectation-beating experiences, or help customers share those experiences, then there is real commercial value in social media.

So, here, for your inspiration and delectation, are 10 brands that are walking the social media talk in what I believe are remarkable - and commercially savvy - ways:

1. Amazon: Boosts sales with a deal of the day tweet on Twitter that, when remarkable, gets re-tweeted around the people-powered twittersphere. Combine this with allowing buying advice for customers by customers on their site, you have a veritable social media sales engine. Now head over to DellSwarm to see where this social media powered ecommerce is going.

2. Accenture: Value. Delivered. Lead generation, social media style. By posting free business advice in a useful presentation format on presentation sharing site slideshare.net, the consultancy establishes expertise and draw prospects to their sales funnel.

3. Nike: Boosting loyalty by offering runner support for runners by runners, Nike+ is the place for runners from around the world can come together to share performance stats, aching limbs and running tips. All under the Nike brand. In the words of Wired Magazine’s Jeff Howe, the key to social media is to ask not what the community can do for you, but what you can do for the community.

4. Charmin: Out in town and you need a bathroom, and you need it clean. Charmin to the rescue, the tissue brand sponsors sitorsquat.com, a user-powered information sharing site and mobile social app of public convenience locations - with reviews - around the world. If a toilet tissue brand can make social media work...

5. Hyatt: Customer Service for free for guests by guests through Hyatt’s opinion sharing user-review site Yattit. Guests offer each other concierge services on local places to dine and drink. Hyatt saves on bills. Smart.

6. Blendtec: Utility value is not the only social media game in town, entertainment value can work too. This small blender manufacturer tripled sales by posting homemade and highly entertaining “will it blend” ads on video sharing site YouTube

7. P&G: Teen support for teens by teens. By hosting a subtly branded forum BeingGirl where teen girls can connect, discuss and share girl stuff with each other P&G reach a difficult-to-reach demographic - and measure the results to be 4x as effective as TV advertising.

8. Starbucks: Business improvement ideas for free through opinion sharing open idea blog, mystarbucksidea where users can post, vote and comment on each others ideas for how to make the coffee brand better. Coffee ice cubes and free wifi anyone? (Dell, Bestbuy, Asus, and Microsoft are doing the social media idea blog thing too).

9. Threadless: Outsourcing. The hipster apparel brand uses social media to outsource t-shirt design. Site visitors submit designs, share opinions and vote in monthly open outsourcing competitions. Winning designs go into production - and sell out, every time.

10. Apple: eCommerce. The future of social media is mobile, and Apple is profiting today by hosting a social marketplace (App Store) where third party developers can post mobile applications for the iPhone, get them rated by customers, and sell them. Apple of course takes a healthy cut, whilst cutting its own application development costs to a healthy zero. Forget eCommerce, welcome to the world of social commerce - WeCommerce.

So forget ignored ads on social networking and social media sites, undiscovered and unused branded widgets, and ghost town groups haunted only by the desperate, lonely and compulsive (cat litter community anyone?). The real commercial value of social media is as a value delivery channel powered by user contributions and facilitated by you.

Paul Marsden's Blog

Social Media + Net Promoter = ROI

Social Media / 10 Brands Doing it Right