You might have heard about the traditional 5 key metrics in measuring your marketing and online marketing success:

1. Awareness
2. Influence
3. Attitude
4. Response
5. Value

But what if there was a different approach we should be taking in our measurement?  One that will clearly define whether or not we need to rework and refine our own messaging and positioning in the marketplace?  The 6^th Key metric, in fact, encompasses them all, and lies in the term we (not so) loosely term: Customer Value Management.

So let us explore…

1. Awareness
   Getting awareness right in the sense of volume to your site, your brand name and your social presence, is a great way of measuring your marketing success.  In terms of Customer Value Management (CVM), though, this does not clearly indicate our success in getting our message across.The measurement here is to ensure that your brand persona or messaging clearly outlines your value proposition, and that it is interpreted this way.  People build trust relationships, and if they do not understand what you’re representing and understand your positioning, they won’t trust your brand and interact.

   It’s not about what you say, but about how they interpret it.

2. Influence
   To measure your influence in understanding that people believe in you so much and enjoy the influence you have in their decision making process, that they want to keep you close. They want you to not only influence them, but also the people around them continuously.
   
   
3. Attitude
   Oftentimes we measure attitude by what we hear people say about our brand or marketing messages.  Let’s turn it around and start by looking at our own attitudes.  If our attitudes are right, if what we say and do make people want to draw near and feel the need to connect and affiliate, then we got it right.  If not, we need to go back to the proverbial drawing board and re-assess where the attitude pointing outwards should or could be adjusted.
   
   
4. Response
   Traditionally response is seen as the response to your message.  Increased sales, increased revenue and more likes and fans in the social realm.  These are all good principles to measure response and have been the driving force behind charts and graphs for years.  And they work.But in terms of the customer and their value, we need to look at our own response to their response.  When faced with a challenge, do we respond with an open mind, or do we react arrogantly?  Do we welcome their opinions on our brand, or follow the regiment ways of mass media, not allowing them to form part of our ethos?

   People don’t care what we know, until they know that we care.
   

5. Value
   And finally – instead of seeing our clients and marketing as just the impact on our bottom line, seeing what value we are adding to them. This is exactly the shift marketing needs to make when we look at our brands becoming interactive instead of trying to dictate to the mass media and enforcing our ideas on the predominantly ‘prosumer’ market.

   Our measurement in engagement value should provide the flexibility and insight to measure whether or not the market is letting us in.

Most of us love the idea (still) of speaking or broadcasting our ideas and values.  The world has changed and is changing as we speak.  New measurement metrics are key to keeping abreast of our client partners, and in this measurement, crucial to our realignment of voice and strategy.

Influence and Collaboration: Robin Pullen, BCI

Why are companies with Facebook profiles on the hunt for more “Likes”?
It could be one of the following reasons or in most cases all of them:
To gain more social media fans, to gain brand exposure, to position their brands in the eyes of the consumers, and ultimately to effectively utilise this medium to run competitions and promotions.
As the Social Media Expert at SAbest it intrigues me as to why Facebook users do not want to like a Company or Brand on Facebook. I did some research to see why and what expectations people have when they do interact with a Company or Brand socially.

There are various reasons why Facebook fans don’t “Like” a Company on Facebook:

• 54% don’t want to be bombarded with messages or ads,
• 45% don’t want to give any companies access to personal profile information,
• 29% don’t want companies to contact them through Facebook,
• 23% don’t see the benefit of it,
• 4% don’t understand what it means to “Like” a company.

If a Facebook fan likes your Company page, it is very important to observe that they do so with an expectation. People don’t just “Like” every page on Facebook, they “Like” it for a reason. Fans like Company pages to gain access to exclusive content, events, sales or promotions.

47% of users “Like” a page to receive updates about the company, persons or organisation in their newsfeed. 26% want to interact with the page owner. The survey also shows that only 24% want to be contacted through other social media channels such as Twitter once they have interacted with a company on Facebook. 37% do not expect anything to happen.

Media such as photos and videos always perform well on Facebook. It grabs attention in newsfeeds and it is easy to share.

Just ask. People like to interact with each other so ask for those opinions on topics, and if you want your fans to share favourite content, go ahead – ask them.

One of a fan’s expectations is that the page owners will thank them for their replies and for sharing their opinions. From time to time, talk about things other than your products. Wish them happy holidays. Ask them fun questions or to share their personal stories.

Remember, if a fan likes your page; interact with them, because it’s one of the biggest expectations any Facebook Fan has.

So this is quite a statement. This might not be completely true but I know some companies that feel this way when they stumble upon a complaint about their products or services.

People have moved away from simply phoning up a company to complain about their products or services. Gone are the days of waiting in a phone queue for hours at end. Consumers are now going on-line to air their opinions about services and products.

There has been plenty of websites released that offer people a space to complain for the world to see. The problem with this is that these never disappear and your company has very little control over the opinions that are voiced.

So how can you manage your reputation on-line and stay one step ahead? As staying one step ahead in 2010 is our theme for this week we would like to let you in on a little secret. The tools are already available.

With web 2.0 changing the model of content generation from the corporation to the consumer, reputation management has become an increasingly more complicated subject. I would like to tell you the most effective way to manage your reputation, is by being proactive and opening up the communication channel.

People are just looking for somewhere to vent their frustrations. Consumers have been turning to the web as an outlet when they don’t find any answer by using traditional forms of communication i.e. phone and email. Now they are writing blog posts, tweeting and even building complete websites focused on bad service they receive from companies.

Lets approach this from a different perspective. You offer your clients a public website that allows them to air their complaints be it a twitter account, a company blog or a website that administrate your customer services on-line.

Consumers will rather turn to these to report their problems, as they know that these concerns are available in the public scene and as such addressed effectively because of this. This in turn then immediately provides your company with control over the situation again.

Micro blogging service Twitter has become one of these outlets and is easily and freely available to consumers. As consumers voice their thoughts, be it bad or good, you could be there to address it, proactively stomping out situations before they become problems.

Popular CRM software such as Salesforce.com even now help you to setup twitter customer services through their Service Cloud product. This allows you to track service request on several communication channels just like you would with your client relationship management software.

Reputation management has become fundamental to companies and as such you need to open up all forms of communication so that consumers can move from being “wimps”, from our company’s perspective, to active participants in our companies growth.

If you are interested in us helping you with a solution that will suite your company feel free to contact us.