Social Word-of-Mouth Marketing Lessons Learned HOW SEVEN BRANDS GOT IT RIGHT AND WRONG

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2 Social Word-of-Mouth Marketing Lessons Learned HOW SEVEN BRANDS GOT IT RIGHT AND WRONG 1 Lesson One: Consumers are Always Talking About Products, Page 3 Regardless of Their Immediate Intent to Purchase 2 Lesson Two: Don t be Blinded by High Reach; Page 4 Trust is More Valuable Lesson Three: Developing the Right Program Theme Page 5 Can Jump-Start Influencer Enthusiasm Lesson Four: Overestimating Customer Influence and Incentive Page 6 Lesson Five: Emphasizing Creative Concepts and Page 8 Taglines Drives Better Engagement 6 Lesson Six: Gum isn t Enough: Find the Incentive Page 9 Sweet Spot 7 Lesson Seven: Using Consumer Research to Promote Page 10 Social Endorsements Conclusion Page 11 pg. 1

3 Brands often struggle to successfully adopt emerging marketing tactics, especially those that transition from nice to have to must have overnight and social word-of-mouth marketing is no different. SocialChorus, the leading word-of-mouth marketing solution, helps dozens of the world s leading brands deliver millions of social endorsements and in this ebook, we share some of the best lessons learned. Initially, many of our clients want to apply traditional marketing practices to their social programs. However, as technology and the Internet have evolved, so have consumers. They are less likely to trust traditional advertising as they become more socially connected to other consumers, bloggers and friends-of-friends on social media. In fact, Nielsen research shows that 92% of consumers trust these word-of-mouth recommendations over all other forms of advertising which then translates to higher purchase intent. With this evolution, brands solely relying on traditional advertising practices are missing a big opportunity. This ebook contains examples from seven of our customers who had varying assumptions or beliefs regarding their product and how to promote it with social word-of-mouth. Once social word-of-mouth programs were put into action, brands quickly realized whether their assumptions were either right or wrong. These programs allowed brands to, if necessary, correct their assumptions about their products and the people who use them. The cases described here are just a small sample of the power of social word-of-mouth in reshaping the lens through which brands view their interactions with customers. pg. 2

4 LESSON ONE Consumers are Always Talking About Products, Regardless of Their Immediate Intent to Purchase Check This Out! This is Great! SocialChorus devised and launched a social word-of-mouth program to help a global brand create strong emotional connections with consumers around unique uses of several products. SocialChorus leveraged influencers and advocates built-in social communities to tell powerful stories that resonated with the end consumer. Assumption: Some products are only relevant during certain times of year Prior to launch, the brand believed consumers only value some products on a seasonal basis (e.g. that consumers only think about and purchase certain products in certain months out of the year). To test the brand s assumption, SocialChorus developed content that can be shared throughout the year. This always on content was accessible anytime throughout the year and repurposed on owned and paid social channels. Influencers and advocates are always seeking inspiration and product information on social networks, and a brand s social word-of-mouth marketing approach should reflect that fact. Always on content produces high levels of engagement and referrals from brand superfans across multiple social networks over a prolonged period of time. Reality: Consumers chatter constantly about products By examining the social activity over the course of the program, the brand was able to see that consumers actually do maintain yearlong awareness of a product thought to be seasonal. SocialCHorus began with examining the program s impact on social activity across multiple social networks, most notably Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. By paying attention to influencer and audience social activity, SocialChorus discovered that consumers are always talking about products, regardless of their immediate intent to purchase. DIY projects, various home improvements and holiday decorations are a constant source of discussion across social media. And perhaps more importantly, the brand realized that advertising or marketing the product during the perceived off months will have a positive effect on sales and consumer intent to purchase. Lesson Learned: Always on content is crucial The always on program content allowed the brand to see social conversations about products occurring all year long, with no regard for the perceived product seasonality. The program itself included 90 influencers and advocates whose original content pg. 3

5 generated a total of 270,711 social engagements and endorsements, which were delivered to roughly 17.4 million consumers. Not only did this reinforce the value of always on content, but it also demonstrated how social word-of-mouth programs can deliver valuable marketing insights to debunk long-held product assumptions. LESSON TWO Don t be Blinded by High Reach; Trust is More Valuable TRUST REACH A luxury fashion company wanted to promote a new product launch the release of a new limited edition watch. In the past, the company had focused their social efforts on engaging professional influencers and bloggers. Assumption: High reach is better than high trust The company had only worked with professional influencers in the past, therefore they assumed that paying a handful of high reach professional bloggers to promote their new watch would drive the most social engagement and highest purchase intent. The company was also concerned that allowing expanded access to exclusive content in order to drive more engagement would dilute the brand image as being exclusive to the jet set crowd. In SocialChorus experience, large-scale social engagement is increasingly driven by a group of influencers called the Power Middle. These influencers typically have a smaller, but fiercely loyal audience (2,500 to 25,000 unique monthly visitors to their blog or other social networks). Due to the nature of their niche communities, we have found that the Power Middle drives significantly higher engagement rates than media paid for and owned by the brand (16 times higher on average). Download The Value of the Power Middle in Social Marketing ebook to learn more about activating these influencers. bit.ly/powermiddle In addition, the Power Middle operates at a much lower individual cost than professional influencers. After educating the company on benefits of utilizing the Power Middle, SocialChorus created a social word-of-mouth program focused on empowering influencers to speak on behalf of the brand. Influencers were encouraged to share their style and show how they would style the watch with an outfit via Instagram and Twitter contests to help promote the watch launch. pg. 4

6 Reality: Higher engagement rates through earned results SocialChorus developed a list of Power Middle influencers and worked with the company to incentivize influencers to share exclusive branded images and digital content with their readership. This brand content was meaningful, aligned with the influencers social pages and social channels, and perceived as valuable by the Power Middle influencers. The social word-of-mouth marketing campaign enabled the company to not only connect with 71 new influencers passionate about the brand, but to produce 14,000 social endorsements that were delivered to over 2.1 million consumers in one month. This level of engagement led to excellent participation in the program s Instagram and Twitter contest. The end result: the limited edition watch promptly sold out. Lesson Learned: Engage Power Middle influencers with the right content The Power Middle influencers produced more audience engagement than professional influencers would have while operating at a fraction of the investment required. Influencers enjoy sharing exclusive, interesting content that positions them to have a relationship with a brand they love. These two factors, combined with the company s focus on the Power Middle, produced a very successful program. LESSON THREE: Developing the Right Program Theme Can Jump-Start Influencer Enthusiasm A social word-of-mouth program conducted for a leading auto manufacturer offered a lesson around the power of nostalgia. The brand believed that a car is more than a car it s an experience. Assumption: Nostalgia and personal experience makes consumers more connected to certain product categories The auto manufacturer believed that consumers have a connection to their car that extends beyond the normal affinity consumers have for a product they love. The brand assumed that an appeal to nostalgia and personal experience was needed in order to successfully engage influencers and their audiences. SocialChorus worked with the brand to develop a program around a road trip theme to reinforce the role that cars play in our lives by appealing to the nostalgia most influencers have for past road trips with friends and family. The program focused on producing influencer content via blog posts to reinforce the role that cars play in our lives. Buying a car is a large investment with a long buying cycle. It was important to create a theme that would drive interesting content that consumers could relate to even if they were not currently looking to purchase a new car. pg. 5

7 Reality: Promoting valuable, personal endorsements drives better engagement Upon studying the first wave of influencer endorsements, the brand learned that it was right in assuming that people grow attached to their cars. In fact, the brand had actually underestimated the phenomenon considerably. A car really was more than a car. The road trips theme clearly resonated attracting 198 influencers and producing over 23,000 social endorsements that were delivered to approximately 3.1 million consumers during the four month program. This all resulted from quality blog posts crafted by influencers using personal experiences to promote the brand. The program theme resonated with a wide range of influencers because it allowed them to celebrate and share their own unique memories, stories and traditions, which in turn gave the brand original content that was engaging and meaningful. Lesson Learned: A nostalgic program theme fosters genuine enthusiasm This program enforced the necessity of creating a strong, relevant and exciting theme. It s important to create a theme that allows influencers to be creative while naturally weaving in the brand and its message into their original content. The personal nature of an influencer sharing their own experience or story resonates with consumers and leads toward positive brand conversations, awareness and consideration. In addition, creating a universally appealing, onbrand theme that is wide in scope attracts influencers and allows them to operate with a certain degree of creative freedom. This creative freedom serves as an incentive by allowing influencers to organically weave brand messages into their own stories. LESSON FOUR: Overestimating Customer Influence and Incentive Another important lesson learned involves a U.S. food conglomerate with a presence on six continents and billions of dollars in annual revenue. The brand was interested in developing a social word-of-mouth marketing program to promote their healthy food product line with their consumer database and a group of Power Middle influencers. The brand encountered problems when it came to incentivizing Power Middle influencers and activating their loyal consumers. pg. 6

8 Assumption: Anyone who cares about the brand is a valuable influencer and low value coupons motivate endorsement As a test, SocialChorus ran two programs simultaneously: a program targeting consumers (i.e. a fan/follower program consisting of general consumers), and a program targeting Power Middle influencers. The brand believed that Power Middle influencers would be eager to receive a complimentary $5.00 coupon in exchange for writing a product review and also a $2.00 digital coupon to share with their audience. They also assumed that members of their consumer database (who opted into a relationship with the brand) would drive the same amount of activity as Power Middle influencers.the general consumers received exclusive $3.00 digital coupons for use when purchasing any five products. They were asked to share a similar $2.00 digital coupon with their followers. Reality: Influencers who aren t socially savvy aren t great influencers and $2.00 coupons are not enough The reliance on these two groups did not work well, at least initially. The consumer database was not socially active enough (and in some cases at all) to adequately promote the product line. While consumers will buy products, this doesn t necessarily translate to driving significant social engagement for the brand. It was also challenging to activate the Power Middle in exchange for a $5.00 coupon; the incentive simply wasn t worth their time. The bottom line is that an equal value exchange must occur between brand and influencer to encourage worthwhile content. perceived social currency value. Through these relationships we learned that many Power Middle influencers had a personal connection with the brand s health eating and lifestyle message. This contributed to the Power Middle outperforming the consumer program and driving twenty times the activity (2.47% engagement rate) in three months. In total, the program attracted 103 Power Middle influencers and only 91 consumers (from a group of more than 10,000) which reflects the latter group s low activation rate. Together they produced over 63,000 social endorsements (60,000 of which came from the Power Middle) that were delivered to over 8.3 million consumers. Lesson Learned: Value exchange drives influencer endorsements Despite the disappointing social currency offer, the Power Middle program outperformed the consumer program due in large part to influencers willingness to craft high quality product reviews. To some degree, this can be attributed to the influencers previous experiences as product reviewers. The lack of preexisting social network use by the consumer club members also played a key role in the disparity between the two groups. This case highlighted that brands must give valuable social currency to influencers in order to encourage action and participation in the program and align with the right influencer audience. Social wordof-mouth campaigns will not be successful when influencers interest does not map to the campaign theme, promoted product or social currency. Also, it s clear that brands must focus on influencers that are already active on social media in order to successfully engage them for a campaign. In order to promote Power Middle activity, the brand had to offer additional coupons to increase the pg. 7

9 LESSON FIVE: Emphasizing Creative Concepts and Taglines Drives Better Engagement Another Fortune 500 brand approached SocialChorus to create a social word-of-mouth program for a product launch in the home durable goods space. The brand wanted to drive unconventional usage for its new product. The brand believed that crafting an excellent tagline and creative concept would really drive social engagement around the new product line with a new audience segment female millenials. Assumption: Interactivity is a great way to increase product buzz Before the program began, a tagline and concept (a quiz) were developed to help promote the new product line to the female teen segment, especially in the personal style category. The interactive style quiz determined the best style fit for the influencer and the brand assumed the quiz would encourage social engagement. The style quiz and product samples were made available to help consumers complete and enhance their next home project using the product. Influencers were encouraged to post their quiz results on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. Reality: A thoughtful concept and tagline go a long way in promoting engagement By utilizing the branded content and quiz results, influencers created unique DIY projects (many of which were captured on video) to share with their audiences. Approximately 300,000 consumers took the quiz, demonstrating both the concept s value in engaging influencers and the interest level of influencers when presented with engaging, relevant content. The tagline and style quiz concept proved to be a big hit 30 influencers produced a total of over 188,000 social endorsements that were delivered to roughly 12 million consumers. This resulted in SocialChorus recommendation that these concepts form the basis of the brand s always on content. The program ended up earning over 365,400 product sweepstakes entries averaging out to 1,296 new entrants each day over three months. The high level of engagement (2.1%) with this program prompted the brand to continue focusing on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube as key owned social properties that seamlessly interact with the brand s productspecific websites. pg. 8

10 Lesson Learned: Achieving high participation with valuable content Through this social word-of-mouth marketing campaign, the brand learned it could expand the use and audience of its product by creating interesting and relevant branded content. The interesting content encouraged female millennial influencers, who typically thrive on being early adopters of new products, to share their new and interesting ways to use the product line. The brand also learned the value of introducing high amounts of influencer content to its owned social channels. This ensured that engagement levels would remain high as influencers continue to provide valuable content in the hopes of appearing as a part of the brand s owned content. LESSON SIX: Your Product May Not Be Enough: Find the Incentive Sweet Spot Another valuable lesson involves a popular chewing gum that s been a successful brand for nearly 50 years and is currently sold worldwide. The social word-of-mouth program goal was to distribute the brand s digital content to a wider audience, in order to drum up interest on social media channels following a recent advertising campaign. Assumption: Gum alone is a valid social currency The brand believed that gum was a valid social currency and that influencers would create engaging content in exchange for gum. The assumption being that seeding influencers with gum would create excitement and motivate them to actively participate in the program. Reality: Incentives vary depending on influencer level As SocialChorus suspected, the assumption was quickly debunked when a vast majority of influencers scoffed at the idea of performing social endorsements with only gum as a reward even if they were passionate about the brand its products. This helped the brand realize that influencers must be lured with greater value and exclusivity. After feedback from different influencer verticals involved in the campaign, SocialChorus determined that the incentive required to promote influencer activity would vary depending upon the level of the influencer: For super fans: gum is valued due to brand loyalty For product reviewers/brand fans: gum is valued pg. 9

11 for use in giveaways to drive web traffic For Power Middle influencers: product gift cards work best For professional influencers: gum simply isn t enough to incentivize authentic storytelling and great content creation Through influencer feedback, the brand learned that a gift card and three packs of gum are equal in value to a two-year supply of gum. They directly addressed the incentive issue by reducing the amount of gum prizing and increasing the additional value awarded to the influencer. This was considered to be a sweet spot for the widest range of influencers, activating super-advocates with lower reaches as well as Power Middle social publishers with a reach of up to 50K. Once this sweet spot was recognized and acted upon, the program attracted 65 influencers who created content around the program s exciting music theme that produced over 36,000 social endorsements. These endorsements were delivered to over 3.2 million consumers. Lesson Learned: Choose incentives from the influencer perspective This brand s experience highlighted how social wordof-mouth programs force marketers to examine the way brands and consumers value their brand and products. The social currency determination process is key in recruiting and retaining brand advocates. Brands must consider incentives and social currency through the eyes of the influencers they hope to work with. Social word-of-mouth programs are not successful without motivated influencers so finding the incentive sweet spot is vital. LESSON SEVEN: Using Consumer Research to Promote Social Endorsements One of SocialChorus larger clients is a multinational conglomerate with over 50,000 products in a variety of categories. These products generate billions in sales in nearly 200 countries. SocialChorus has managed several programs for the company and in each one of those programs the brand learned something about its products, its consumers and its audience. pg. 10

12 After the brand conducted consumer research to test the reaction to a new branding concept, they approached SocialChorus to create a new social word-of-mouth campaign around the many ways to use the product. Assumption: Develop a relevant concept that excites influencers The brand assumed that the market research findings would translate to social word-of-mouth marketing. SocialChorus was tasked with creating a social word-of-mouth program to drive social engagement and promote the many different ways to use the product. The unique uses concept was to be front and center and the brand believed the concept would excite influencers. Reality: Getting it right from the beginning allows the brand to capitalize on consumer sentiment Using the consumer research, SocialChorus created a program that challenged influencers and caught the attention of consumers. The social word-of-mouth program validated the research and proved that the consumer enthusiasm for the new product uses was not a fluke. This was a valuable and interesting case as the research led the brand and SocialChorus in the right direction from the start. SocialChorus was able to build off this foundation and craft a program that both the influencers and audience could relate to. The program was a great success as it attracted 33 influencers who helped produce over 46,000 total social endorsements. These endorsements were delivered to over 17.4 million consumers via social networks. Lesson Learned: Influencer content is more valuable than brand-created content Moving forward with the unique uses branding campaign proved to be the correct decision. This was verified by SocialChorus social word-of-mouth program designed to drive influencer and audience social endorsements. The program was such a success that SocialChorus recommended the unique uses concept be applied beyond that specific program. The success of the program and subsequent decision to continue using the unique uses concept led to another insight: the brand s Facebook page saw four times the engagement rate when comparing content shared by influencers to content created by the brand. Content created and shared by influencers is called earned content, and social word-of-mouth marketing was driving traffic towards that earned content. SocialChorus helped the brand realize that in order for their own content to be successful they needed to incorporate more influencer-created content into their website and social pages. Conclusion Social media and word-of-mouth marketing are dramatically changing how brands market to consumers. Today, 92 percent of consumers trust word-of-mouth marketing more than all other forms of advertising. Furthermore, the explosive growth of social media means that consumer opinions are more available, and more impactful than ever. While we know that social endorsements are more trusted and less expensive than traditional advertising, wordof-mouth programs have been difficult to implement, impossible to scale, and have not delivered measureable ROI until now. pg. 11

13 The SocialChorus solution provides the scalable social endorsements and measurable ROI that brands desire. Our customers utilize the SocialChorus platform to dramatically increase social endorsements while building direct, always-on relationships with thousands of their most influential advocates. Our customers, including Pepsi, 3M and Intel, leverage SocialChorus solution to launch programs in under an hour and realize ROI within weeks. Our comprehensive solution includes management of influencer relationships, social content distribution, program measurement and comprehensive services to ensure that each campaign is optimized to deliver strong ROI 3x to 5x on average. Our consistent customer success makes SocialChorus the leading social word-of-mouth marketing solution. Contact us: Call: Visit our website: socialchorus.com Visit our blog: blog.socialchorus.com Your brand story. Told by many. pg. 12