Comments on: The Fourth Wave of Marketing Automation = Tapping the Social Web

By: jimtybur

jimtybur — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:56:17 +0000

Thx for stopping by and the comment Craig. Looks like you guys provide a useful service based on what I see so far on your website.

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:38:08 +0000

couldn’t agree more Jim- we are working on integrated solutions to drive sales using the new “social telephone” model. It is really exciting as it includes sales process leverage to show net revenue growth! All components are based on existing investment (eg SF.com) require little to no CapEx and are cloud based for rapid deployment. SME’s will have a level playing field in 2010. Lanching later this month from our end. Would be pleased to review with you next week for an inside look and would welcome your coverage.

By: jimtybur

jimtybur — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:09:13 +0000

Thx Ken. Hopefully some of the social oriented startups will find a way to provide xray vision (like that concept) for brands/companies to understand their end customers better. As I mention in some comments above, the key will be to avoid looking like more spam when it comes to customer acquistion efforts and to be authentic and responsive when it comes to customer retention efforts.

By: jimtybur

jimtybur — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:06:35 +0000

David, thx for the comment. Great blog you have too, looks quite comprehensive and worth a look. It will be interesting to see if startups can build a beachhead of customer traction and real revenue such that their “social” capabilities (and customer bases) are acquired or merely copied by incumbents. I think there is a window of time for startups to build real value here and the social medium is changing quickly enough that nimble startups can stay on the innovation forefront.

Great point on the even earlier incarnation of marketing automation, I guess I drew the line around completely digital efforts vs ones that were hybrid digital/physical (e.g. snail mail) or even completely physical (we all know and hate those telesales calls during dinner and junk mail flyers flooding our mailboxes!) Hopefully this fourth wave of marketing automation that leverages our social footprints will result in more targeted, relevant, symbiotic relationships between customers and brands, instead of just more spam.

By: jimtybur

jimtybur — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:50:19 +0000

Steve, thx .

I like the concept of content automation, you guys are certainly pioneers and innovators on that dimension.

By: jimtybur

jimtybur — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:48:41 +0000

Thx Speiser, time for us to fund some innovators in this category. Key for entrepreneurs around social media will be to find a business model that is defenseable and scales without too much manual intervention. Often times, I’ve seen startups in this space get pulled by brands and ad agencies to essentially be their outsourced arm for custom campaign development. You can make some solid revenue with such a model for sure but I’ve struggled so far to find ones that scale beyond $10m and can sustain high gross margin dollars.

By: jimtybur

jimtybur — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:47:06 +0000

Thx Rahim. Another way to break it down for larger brands is to frame using social media for “customer acquistion” vs “customer retention”. Lead nurturing among followers and fans falls into customer acquisition and could be just the start of a new relationship started in the realm of social media. It will be interesting to see what the analogy to “drip feed” marketing will be within social media. I think the key will be for brands to preserve their authenticity by using their good content as a pseudo ad or campaign vs succumbing to the easy route of just spamming that fan/ follower with a bunch of meaningless offers.

By: jimtybur

jimtybur — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:40:04 +0000

Thx Sachin. Looking forward to seeing some of your ideas in this space.

By: Sachin Rekhi

Sachin Rekhi — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:46:38 +0000

Great post Jim!

Definitely agree that we are going to see new opportunities created through the merging of the social web with business apps. In my mind, marketing automation is one important part of it, but as you mention, lead nurturing, sales productivity, and strengthening relationships are also great new possibilities for Social CRM.

By: Rahim Fazal

Rahim Fazal — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:48:21 +0000

Bang on, Jim.

I agree with your argument that tapping into the social web will unlock a tremendous opportunity for b2b marketers in the future.

Where’s the value today?

If you’re a b2b marketer, you might ask yourself: how does the social web fit into your existing marketing objectives, and how and when do you pick and choose which tactics to pull out to get you there?

As Ken suggests, b2b marketers need to ensure that whatever they focus on today, doesn’t affect the bigger opportunity.

This is where, I believe, executing on your marketing objectives, particularly, acquisition and monetization, gets tricky. If you push for too hard a sell, you’ll ultimately kill the goose. This is the reason why most b2b marketing programs have low conversion rates and/or high churn.

The short term greatest opportunity is relationship building, or as you called it, lead nurturing.
My feeling is that platforms likes Facebook and Twitter are powerful channels to build and develop real relationships with customers that can lead to monetization and acquistion (of new leads via existing ones) down the road.

And as a marketer it’s key to understand that developing these relationships is a long-term program, not a campaign-driven one that begins and ends in 3 months (or 3 weeks!).

Where should all efforts begin?
Your existing fans and followers. They’re the ones with their hands up saying “pick me!”