It’s the organizational part that’s more difficult, though – people naturally get stuck in routines, are averse to change, and executives are loath to take risks on projects that have uncertain chances of success. We’ve collected our best practices in getting organizations to adapt in our Make the Case to Invest in Social Media challenge center, and most of the lessons there hold true for channels like mobile, as well.

With that in mind, we also thought we’d take a second look at an interview we did a few years back with Susan Lavington, former SVP of Marketing at USA Today. She was at USA Today during the heyday of social adaption, and led that paper – a progressive one, by print journalism standards – through a difficult transition to social.

MLC members can read the interview in its entirety.

That might work (and be necessary) for TV, a channel where ad buys have to be coordinated months in advance and audience preferences don’t change too much. But for social media, where channels change near-daily and audience behavior is still in flux? We think companies should be focused primarily on experimentation and flexibility – and that plans should optimize to those goals.

Our Social Media Plan on a Page will help get you there – it’s a five-step method for creating a world-class social media experimentation strategy, one that’s grounded in enterprise priorities and audience preferences. Here’s what you’ll do:

Ground strategy in business objectives. Pick – and fully understand –  your company’s 2-5 growth priorities for the year. This guards against wasting time and money by choosing projects that don’t mesh with enterprise-wide priorities.

Assess your audience dynamics. Dig deep, and understand how and why your target audience consumes social media. Make sure you have an idea of where consumption might be headed in the future by identifying your lead users and examining their behaviors.

Identify your strategic opportunities. Explore how social media can help your company accentuate its strengths, as well as meet customer needs in ways that are difficult for competitors to replicate.

Select the highest-potential experiments. Determine which near-term experiments in social media will help position your company to take advantage of longer-term strategic opportunities in social media.

Measure your social media efforts. Use a “Return on Objectives” approach to assess if and how your social media efforts are driving business results.

MLC members, you can download the full Social Media Plan on a Page template and get started on your social plan today.

But many brands struggle with the risk involved when using consumers to market the brand.  After all, giving consumers the license to share their thoughts on your brand allows them to share the bad along with the good.  In addition, it can be hard to select the right people to represent the brand.

Ford tackled these challenges to launch the U.S. model of the Ford Fiesta by using consumer advisors, or “agents.”  To ensure that both consumers and the brand could trust the agents, Ford implemented a rigorous selection process to ensure good brand fit and social media reach.  Ford selected a very diverse group of agents, so most consumers in the Fiesta’s target demographic can find agents like them.

A larger struggle for most brands, though, is giving up control over what the consumer advisors say.  Ford knew it needed to balance the need for some brand control with the need to generate authenticity by giving agents uncensored speech, so they assigned monthly missions to give some structure to the agents’ experiences. Ford then allowed the agents to use their own blogs, tweets, and YouTube channels to tell their stories in their own words, pictures, and videos.

In addition to providing structure for the agents, Ford further leveraged these missions by selecting some that highlighted the car’s features.  For example, one mission had one agent drive until his car ran out of gas, showcasing the car’s high gas mileage; other missions included turning the car into an ice-cream truck (showing off a large amount of trunk and storage space) and taking a road trip (to demonstrate its comfort over long distances).

Using the agents to tell the brand’s story had really positive results: Ford generated the same name awareness for the Fiesta as the Ford Edge and Flex had after two years of traditional advertising at just 10% the cost of a traditional media campaign.

After seeing such great success in the United States, Ford adopted the campaign for India.  MLC members, click here to read about how Ford used the agents to generate brand interest in an emerging market.

Part of this has to do with greater information availability – customers are educating themselves about products and solutions before they ever see a rep, and, as such, are in a better place to make more thorough and deliberate decisions about what they buy. Time pressures have led business leaders to spend less time with reps, as well, reducing the amount of messaging purchasers absorb prior to the buying decision.

But one important element of buyer scrutiny is fear: fear that the solution will fail or not work as advertised, and that their key metrics – or, even worse, their careers – will take the hit. And who can blame them? In today’s networked world, the cost of failure is a lot higher than it once was.

Autodesk, a 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software company, solved the problem using a purpose-built online community that connects credible customers to qualified leads, enabling customers to assuage the risk-oriented fears of the prospects. Using a variety of incentives for existing customers, the online forum enables conversations across customer groups. The best conversations are converted to product messaging – helping bring “social proof” into the company’s marcomm efforts.

MLC members, for more on this solution, check out the full case.

First, some background, if you’re not knee deep in health-related social media circles. The US Food and Drug Administration, in addition to determining which pharmaceutical products should and shouldn’t be allowed in America’s pharmacies, also regulates the ways in which pharma companies are allowed to market to doctors and patients. Sounds smart, right? After all, we’re talking about potentially-dangerous drugs, here.

As such, they’ve developed guidelines and rules for the use of electronic marketing in a pharmaceutical setting. The only problem is, they haven’t been seriously updated since the late 1990s – and do not account for social media at all. This has put pharma companies in the weird position of being able to use social to broadcast certain messages but unable to have meaningful conversations with their customers, lest a side effect or adverse event is reported, setting off a chain of regulatory red tape.

The FDA listened and, in November 2009, held two days of hearings where pharma marketers, consultancies, doctors and scientific groups testified and gave suggestions on adapting the agency’s guidelines for a shifted communications landscape. And then, we waited – until Christmas Day 2011, when the FDA published this – entitled “Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information About Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices” - in the Federal Register, without even issuing a press release. This particular issue is one small facet of the pharma/social media problem, and it looks as though that the agency, rather than issuing sweeping guideline shifts that acknowledge a new communications landscape, is going to attack issues piecemeal.

But this specific guidance gives very little evidence that the FDA is thinking about social media as a systemic phenomenon, as opposed to a special case, capable of being dealt with with one-off regulations. First, the basic assumption is that marketers will be using social channels to “disseminate product information”, i.e., to advertise. That’s a given, but social offers organizations a lot more than just more space to plaster messages; we’ve talked about how social media trends mirror those in real life, and presumably the ability to listen to consumers better might lead to better health outcomes.

So here’s what I’d like out of future FDA guidances: an acknowledgement that social is a conversational medium, not a broadcast one; that it has benefits for pharmaceutical companies and broader public health outcomes beyond providing a place for Pharma to advertise; and that rigid rules on what Pharma can and can’t discuss in certain circumstances is bound to fail in a landscape where drugs are prescribed for all kinds of purposes.

Maybe we’ll get it, but I’m not hopeful.

Here’s another interesting finding from the social media survey—there is zero correlation between social media resourcing and business results.

That may or may not surprise you when it comes to financial resources.  But the result held true for people resources, as well.  That came as a surprise to us, since social media efforts are often so labor intensive.

How could this be?

Having talked directly with 90% of the 500 organizations that have taken the diagnostic, we have a theory.  It boils down to a lot of organizations spending time and money on social media without a clear connection to, or at least hypothesis about, how those efforts could plausibly drive business results.

So, here’s what underneath the zero correlation in the regression analysis we did:

• Some of the organizations winning with social media spend little by way of resource, but focus those efforts very well on the few social activities that have potential to drive results.  Call these guys the Guerrillas.  They are winning through small but disciplined spend in social media.

• Meanwhile, on the losing end, some organizations put a lot of resource into social efforts, but don’t see much payoff because they are focused on areas that are unlikely ever to produce business results.  Think of B2B manufacturing organizations setting up Facebook pages.  Very unlikely to yield meaningful business results.  Call these guys the Shadow Jumpers.

• You’ve got another set of companies that spend a lot on social media, but spread their social efforts too thinly across many opportunities—call them the Peanut Butter Spreaders.  Altimer just reported the average global enterprise manages over 175 business-related social media accounts.  Yikes.  Time for “Operation Cull the Herd”.

Because you’ve got these high spend, low results organizations intermingled with high and low spend but high results organizations, you end up with zero correlation between spend and results.  Bottom line, it’s not how much time and energy you put toward social media, but how well focused those resources are on areas that have potential to create real business value. In other words, be a guerrilla.

If you’re an MLC member, and you’d like to take the social media opportunity diagnostic, let your account manager know or send me an email: pspenner@executiveboard.com.  We’ll put a report in your hands with all kinds of useful benchmarks, and offer some advice based on your results.

If there’s one thing the past few years have been notable for, for marketers, it’s instability and uncertainty. Core assumptions of the craft are being called into question by technological shifts, a growing impetus on globalization is running into geography-specific challenges, and it’s unclear whether consumers and business buyers will re-learn pre-recession habits.

A lot of these are longer-term issues, ones that we might not get clarity on for a few years. But some might be decided in 2012. Here are some things to look out for:

B2B social/digital media.In the B2B space, we think this might be the year that marketers gain a bit more visibility into how best to use social media in the business buying environment. A number of variables are falling into place: for instance, marketing automation technologies are helping marketers use social data and platforms more effectively and a greater percentage of buyers are becoming more comfortable with social media.

I’m not suggesting that we’ll learn “the answer” to all B2B social media related questions, but I think we’ll get quite a bit closer.

Geograhpic uncertainties.A number of the major markets big firms have invested in across the last 10 years are showing signs that idiosyncratic issues might affect consumer and business outcomes in the next year. In the United States, the November presidential election is very important for – among others – the finance and healthcare industries, as legislation passed under President Obama may be rolled back in the event a Republican unseats him. In Europe, the ongoing sovereign debt crisis still threatens big consequences for the Eurozone, and if the situation isn’t resolved well (and soon), consumers could feel the pain even worse than they do now.

In India, the government has begun to show signs of wariness towards Western business, such as shelving a plan to allow foreign retailers to open stores in the country. And in China, there are some signs that phenomenal economic growth may be slowing.

In general, firms have done a great job of hedging their bets geographically, but significant challenges in each of those geographies remain – challenges that may shake out between now and December 31.

Erosion of sticky recession habits. We’ve talked about it here before, but there’s significant evidence that it takes consumers and businesses quite some time to retreat from frugal habits learned in recessionary times – even if those habits aren’t strictly necessary anymore.

Those habits have created some pretty tough times for marketers, as margins have decreased, price comparison and individual research blunt the impact of messaging, and budget contractions have shrunken the spending pie.

We know that habits shift through some combination of changing economic circumstances and time. Will 2012 be the year your customers loosen the strings a bit?

Mobile and e-commerce. Pretty much everyone buys some things online these days, but in recent years, we’ve seen a vanguard of early adopters shift to doing most or all of their shopping online or with their phones (you can count me as one; I hate malls). With Amazon Prime and a subscription to a grocery delivery service like Peapod or FreshDirect, one can just about get away with never stepping into a retail store again.

Now, clearly, there are benefits to the retail environment that, for some, make up for the hassle of having to actually enter the store. I think this may be the year where brands and retailers figure out exactly what those things are, and find a limit on consumers’ willingness to shift their shopping online.

What have we missed? Let us know in the comments.

Oh, boy, was there ever. We cut our dataset in two – companies that have hired social media vendors, and companies that haven’t – and asked the data: how satisfied, on average, is each of these groups with their business results?

The ugly truth – noting, of course, that we’ve controlled for other factors:

In other words, companies that have kept social media strategy in-house are almost twice as likely to be satisfied with the business results they’re getting as companies that have engaged agencies to work on high-level strategy. Perhaps some of this is confirmation bias; we tend to be more pleased with the results of our own work than the results of others’. But there’s an important nugget of truth in there: social media agencies and experts don’t nearly deliver the value they promise, and what’s more, they can’t possibly do it.

Take it from me: I’m a former agency pro, and at one point in my career, unironically called myself a “social media expert”. My firm, I think, was one of the better ones; we were smart, we worked hard for our clients, and we got a lot of one-off results. But enduring business results were never in the offing, at least not because of anything we did. Why? Because social media isn’t an administrative task you can outsource to a vendor, like media buying – it’s a channel that requires re-thinking the way a company views itself within, and in comparison to, its customers and the rest of society. That kind of change can only be led internally, by someone familiar with that organization’s culture – and that’s a position that 99.9% of vendors will never, ever be in.

But I reserve special vitriol for the agencies and consultants that promise lasting business results. A lot of folks will pay lip service to internal cultural knowledge and changes, but in the same breath will ask for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of your company’s money in exchange for their “expertise”, which often consists of having read a few Clay Shirky books and writing a lot of silly stuff on Twitter. Companies go for it – which makes a kind of sense, since social is hard to figure out, time-consuming to plan for, and often asks people and organizations to do things that violate long-held conceptions of the world. So you hire an agency or a fast-talking consultant, and are inevitably disappointed with the results.

Next time you go to hire an agency, remember a few things:

No one’s an expert. Seriously. Human interaction with technology is constantly evolving at a pace unimaginable to any one person. New norms and ways of interacting with peers via the web come and go fast. There are academics who devote their lives to the study of how people act on social platforms, and never get close to “the” answer (although they find out a lot of interesting stuff along the way). Be suspicious of anyone who claims expertise.

Outside people can’t solve inside problems. Getting good at social requires a culture shift – and I say that with as little judgment as possible (i.e. I don’t think a pro-social culture shift is necessarily a good thing). If you’re not willing to undergo the shift, an outside agency or consultant can’t help you get there in any appreciable way.

Beware of one-size fits all models. Agencies make their money, in part, by transferring expertise: making things they learn from one client applicable to another. Sometimes they stretch a bit, and sometimes their expertise isn’t transferable at all. If an agency touts work they’ve done for competitors or exemplar companies, without playing up their decision-making processes or smarts – be wary.

MLC members, for more on social media marketing, visit our social media topic center.

Despite several years of slowly shifting mindsets, Digital is too often still treated as its own stand-alone function, separate from Promotions, PR, Direct Marketing etc.  It should, by contrast, be treated as a part of all marcomm efforts.  Here are a few reasons why:

• To provide social proof from peers and validate brand messages (via social media)
• To offer real utility that helps prove campaign promises (e.g., via mobile apps, microsites)
• To create memorable experiences that bring brand benefits to life (e.g., via interactive games, virtual or live events promoted online etc.)
• To connect touchpoints together. Mobile and social can be the glue between all others touchpoints – and a means of accelerating consumers along the purchase path. For example, mobile enables consumers to purchase or learn more about a brand/product wherever they see an ad. This stops people forgetting about the ad and increases chances they’ll be just interested enough to take the next action then and there. Mobile plays a similar role in the store, i.e., it enables shoppers to check reviews online and saves them having to go home to do that due diligence before buying.

Now, we haven’t seen anyone who’s fully solved this one yet, but here are a few techniques that leading marketers have been using to integrate around digital:

Shift organizational and agency structures. Make your digital agency the lead agency (we’ve spoken to quite a few companies that have done this).

Appoint an ‘integration champion’ with a background in digital.  This person needs clout with multiple digital and non-digital teams/agencies as well as the power to enforce collaboration. MLC members, learn more about the role of an integration champion.

Assign a digital expert to each offline channel team ( e.g., TV, Promotions, Shopper Marketing, Direct Mail) to ensure each team considers digital extensions to their ideas and tests/optimizes ideas online before running with them is less flexible channels.

Start sourcing leaders (in any marketing position) from digital marketing roles to ensure a focus on digital comes from the top.

Make digital part of everyone’s job. Build a digital academy (as Intel has done) and require all marketers – even those in traditional channels – to pass at least the first module of lessons. Create more complex modules based on each individual’s requirements.

Encourage all marketers to participate in social media discussions with consumers (and thus learn more about it) by allocating badges/rewards for participation.

Get senior marketers to shadow junior marketers to learn about the new world of social media (some companies call this ‘reverse shadowing’).

Organize marcomm planning around digital. Start marcomm planning by coming up with a  ‘digital idea’ or an ‘experiential idea’ instead of any other kind of ‘big idea’ and then work out how it can play offline.  An ‘experiential idea’ should be an experience that conveys the brand benefit (and ideally breaks people out of their old ways of thinking).  Typically, these involve multiple digital elements, both to drive people to the experience and to enable the experience itself.

Make sure mobile and social media teams are included in campaign planning from the start. (See “Structure” tips above to help with this).

Optimize budgeting towards experimentation and rapid deployment. Save up to 20% of campaign budget for flexible deployment. Digital allows for faster detection of new opportunities and faster reaction to them, but this requires campaign budget to be reserved for later use in the campaign.

To stay on top of emerging digital platforms ensure a portion of the budget is always allocated to media experimentation.  Allocate 70% of budget to tried-and-tested touchpoints (to avoid excessive risk), 20% to emerging touchpoints that have shown promise, and 10% to totally new touchpoints with no expectation of in-year ROI. MLC members, learn more about the 70-20-10 approach.

Adapt relevant measurement methods and frames. Don’t rely too much on mix models that can underestimate the impact of emerging media (due to low spend and limited sales history). Consider using agent-based modeling and/or the Market Contact Audit to get a better sense of how mobile and social media influence sales.  Agent-based modeling also helps explain how digital and offline channels interact, which aids integrated planning as well as buy in.

Instead of only measuring the number of people reached, also measure the amount of media spend/impressions wasted on the wrong targets. This will encourage a shift away from inefficient offline channels. MLC members, see other ways to make this case.

MLC members, watch this space for more ideas on how to integrate around digital; it’s a topic we’re always interested in!  If anyone has any ideas or potential best practices to share, please let us know.

Pew Research recently took the time to ask people that question directly, and here’s what they found:

First, let’s talk about the elephant in the room, the one thing that’s not on that list, and that’s “Keeping in touch with brands and products I enjoy.” We know that many consumers do that, of course, but it’s obviously not high on their list for being on social media in the first place – more like an ancillary benefit. Yet another reason why marketers should be wary of “engagement” strategies – the people you’re targeting simply aren’t there to be engaged by brands.

But beyond that, this rank ordering of social media uses is useful for marketers trying to figure out how to best integrate social into their products, services, and messages. One thing that surprised me quite a bit was the low ranking users assigned to “Connecting with others w/ shared hobbies or interests” – something that’s personally, for me, probably the most important use of social media. It implies that marketers, when designing social campaigns, should be discounting the stated interest of users, and focusing instead on truly social dimensions – stuff like staying in touch with friends and family, and connecting with old friends.

In practical terms, what does this mean? Well, if you’re General Motors, it’s fairly trivial to launch a Facebook campaign aimed at muscle-car enthusiasts to promote the new Camaro, for instance. But are those enthusiasts open to interest-oriented messaging on that channel? If the data above is true, maybe the answer is no – and instead, maybe it’s better to target a social experience, instead. Encouraging users to think of themselves and their friends in the car, driving the car to social events, and that sort of thing might be more effective than appealing to the gearhead in them.

It’s still early days in terms of targeting users on social networks, and figuring out the right way to target them, but we’ll need to think hard in the coming years about each channel and the expectations the customer brings with them in order to market effectively.

MLC members, for more on social media, check out our social media topic center. Also, do you have thoughts on the right way to target your consumers via social platforms? If so, e-mail me – I’d love to talk further!

But take a step back. Marketers have been on the “engagement” treadmill for probably close to 10 years now, ever since e-mail became a viable commercial channel. Yes, in the interim, we’ve gotten a good deal closer to our consumers – in some cases, giving them a seamless, cross-channel experience both in marketing communications and customer service. We can reach them via e-mail, we can reach them via SMS, we can reach them via Facebook, we can reach them via Twitter. And the cost of hitting those touchpoints is much, much lower than in the old-media world of radio, televisions, and newspapers. But at what cost?

This year, MLC’s key B2C research effort focused on how customers have responded to the barrage of branded information marketers are throwing at them, and the results aren’t pretty: rather than feeling closer to brands, and rather than feeling more sure about their shopping decisions, they’re more confused than ever. The barrage of messages and product choice has led to all kinds of indecisive behaviors, such as endemic brand-switching and “decision spirals” in grocery aisles and retail sales floors. Customers still buy, but many make sub-optimal purchases (and, subsequently, aren’t loyal to the brands they buy), and many put off buying because they’re oversaturated with brand information.

Marketers know a lot of this, but they think that consumer indecision and brand disloyalty happens because of ineffective engagement strategies, not because the very nature of “brand engagement” itself leads to cognitive overload and sub-optimal decisionmaking. MLC members can read the full study to learn why it’s engagement itself, and not poor engagement strategies, that leads to consumer stagnation.

At the end of the day, though, competing brands are taking up more and more of your customers’ cognitive capacity, and you can’t just let them have that real estate. In the study, we advise brands to influence customers in three more targeted ways:

Help consumers advise each other. Consumer-to-consumer information cuts through better than the cacophonous noise of branded information. We profile a number of brands that are serving as consumer advice hubs, helping one-to-one product recommendations take place and bypassing traditional commercial messages.

Simplify the learning journey. Along with more choice, consumers have more variables to take into account when choosing a product. The idea of buying a big-screen television, for instance, is incredibly daunting even to consumers familiar with and conversant in technology. We profile some examples of how companies have simplified the informational component to purchase.

Allow for easier comparison. Give your consumers the tools to deal directly with product proliferation. We profile brands that have deployed simple buying guides, easy-to-remember purchase criteria (like – speaking of engagement – DeBeers’ 4C model), and easy-to-use schemas to allow customers to make the right choice for them.

The company created a community of tech experts, including bloggers and prominent thought leaders, and used those experts’ profile in the broader tech community to drive awareness of the new community. Using customer information disclosed voluntarily within the context of the community, the company was able to use customer-disclosed information to track things like purchase intent, place leads at the correct stage of the purchase funnel, and time commercial interactions to those variables.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to this practice. Interested in more? Check out our full write-up of Telus’ Interactive Lead Qualification Program.

Focused on expanding the share of voice, marketers may be guilty of paying very little attention to streamlining the information path for their consumers. In a noisy marketplace, consumers today are faced with analysis-paralysis, and increasing marketing messaging has done nothing, but confused them. This has resulted in delayed or reduced responsiveness to marketing messages. So what should marketers do?

Leading marketers reduce the information overload on their consumers by compressing their decision journey towards purchase. They do so by actively helping their consumers learn more about their products, instead of passively passing information. They aid consumer research, and propel consumers forward in their purchase decision journey. Marketers can achieve c consumer learning by taking the following steps:

Understand the consumer decision path: Traditional purchase influence research covers the consumer purchase path in bits and pieces. It does not reveal the best timing and order of messages and touchpoints. MLC members Maritz combined qualitative consumer research, media testing, and click-stream analysis to map the full decision path. Follow the analysis up by developing a purchase path that provides minimal and relevant information needed to streamline the consumer purchase journey.

Predict where consumers are in the purchase path: A logical question would be, once you’ve developed you purchase path, how would you know where consumers are on it? Inadvertently, while searching for product information, consumers leave behind some clues to where they are in the purchase path – the “digital breadcrumbs”. These could be online search phrases, visits to comparison sites, etc. Marketers should use analysis tools on this online data to identify the stage of purchase research their consumers are in.

Send shoppers to purchase-driving touchpoints: Once you’ve determined the shopper location on purchase path, use accessible touchpoints to drive consumers to purchase-inducing paths. Like Tesco, who created a virtual mall, reduce consumer distraction by using messaging that drives urgency, induces purchase confidence and enables a smooth purchase. Finally reduce decision stress on you consumers by marketing innovations such as subscriptions, bundling, auto-upgrades, etc.

MLC members can access our full study on Compressing the Decision Journey from our work this summer.

However, some marketers underweight two key elements of trust:

Trust in product information is as important as trust in the brand itself.  Most companies invest significant resources in driving positive word of mouth about their brand, but many invest far less in driving positive word of mouth about specific products (though this is changing; many banks and insurers –USAA, Pemco, BBVA for instance – now have product reviews on their own sites).

Consumers don’t necessarily trust other consumers; they trust credible consumers. Consumers today are overwhelmed by product choice and information and thus need extra reassurance that a product is right for them. As such, they look to advice from consumers who are like them and can shed light on both pros and cons about a product as well as ideal context for use. We call those consumers “advisors” as opposed to “recommenders” (who provide no detail on why they like a product).

Indeed, one recent study found that seemingly positive reviews can actually lower product sales if they aren’t trustworthy.  Some short reviews, such as “best camera,” can significantly harm sales because a) they provide no extra information and b) they seem less objective/honest.  By contrast, seemingly negative reviews can actually boost product sales, for example: “Video problems with some sdhc cards. You may miss some good shots unless you use sandisk extreme III”.  This is because these reviews provide more detail about the products strengths/weaknesses and seem more honest.

Many brands have done a great job getting consumers to recommend their products (e.g., “great product”.  But most brands could to more to improve consumer advice on if and when to buy their products (e.g., great for those looking for an easy-to-use product, but less sophisticated in terms of capabilities.”).   We recently compiled a set of tips and case studies on targeting consumer advisors and helping them give the best advice.  Here’s a quick overview of the 5 steps to take:

Update social listening techniques to identify advisors (i.e., consumers who are respected as an authority in their field) not just brand loyals.  Learn what to track.

Teach consumers to give better advice by understanding the barriers to advice giving. Don’t just explore what kind of advice consumers need; also explore what kind of support your advisors need, e.g., Do they need more product information? Do they need more information on other consumers? See how to create a targeted advisor toolkit here.

Guide ambassador advice giving without telling them what to say. Brands struggle to shape/guide consumers’ advice without undermining their authenticity. See how Ford Fiesta did it.

Help consumers find relevant advice. Help consumers search/filter online reviews by key words or reviewer demographics (to find “people like them”). Learn how to help shoppers find the most relevant advice for them.

For low-involvement products, provide consumer advice on related issues (e.g., health for food products). Low-involvement brands can simplify consumers’ lives by aggregating consumer advice on more complex topics related to their products (e.g., environmental friendliness for cleaning products). See how.

MLC members, for more information on harnessing the power of consumer advisors click here.

The discussion was all in keeping with MLC’s B2B research this year, Influencing the Newly Empowered Customer, in which we suggest marketers need to build conversation muscle in the mid-funnel, as customers engage sales forces later and later in the purchase cycle.

Huge thanks to Anne, Tom and Ari for sharing their wisdom.  And so much of it!  There were too many nuggets to share them all here, so I’ll include some of the ones that stuck out for me:

Think about “stop/start”. Anne talked about scaling back on the number of white papers being written, and instead funneling that energy into social media.  As marketers, it is all too easy to try to use all of the new touchpoints to engage customers, because they are there.  However, that’s death for marketing teams on tight budgets.  There simply isn’t time or resource to do them all well.  If you are going to start with social media, figure out early on what you’re going to stop or scale back.

To Facebook or not to Facebook? There was an interesting discussion, and a little disagreement on the panel, over whether every B2B should have a Facebook page.  Some on the panel said “why not?”  Others said “probably not every B2B”.  Cisco is finding Facebook is a new referral engine, as a place where loyal ambassadors of then Cisco brand connect with Cisco.  That probably works for B2B brands with a popular presence in culture.  For other B2B brands, there are likely better areas to invest precious time and energy than on Facebook.

Mix paid/earned/owned/shared media. Tom at Microsoft shared a great example of using banner ads (paid media) to showcase social comments and threads happening in real time about its products (earned or shared media).  In this case, the paid media amplifies the highly trusted social media, drawing more parties to the conversation.

Bring structure to your social efforts. Ari shared an example of a detailed editorial calendar for Jive’s social efforts leading up to its annual conference.  He pointed out that many business people have a perception that social media is all chaos.  It’s not.  The best social media marketers bring a deliberate, thoughtful, planned approach to social media.

Look for natural “triggers”, don’t invent something new. Too often, B2Bs try to do something new with social media.  Anne’s guidance was to think first in terms of how social media can boost predictable business events, such as product launch or big events.  Much easier to demonstrate returns on social media if they are hitched to an existing, critical business activity.

Don’t tweet or blog drunk. Nothing good comes of this.

One Wide Angle reader suggested I ask the panelists “What’s next in B2B social media?”  Here’s my paraphrasing of the panelists comments:

Hardwiring social media into roles and incentives. Until now, social media has largely been an activity done off the side of the desk, or perhaps by dedicated employees (community managers and the like).  Cisco is going to start weaving social media presence and effectiveness into the core evaluative criteria of its marketers more broadly.  Marketers who have a stronger social graph and can drive business outcomes via social media will advance faster and get paid more.

Integrating social media into the sales pipe.  None of the panelists claimed complete success in embedding social media into the mid- to lower-funnel, so as to improve sales metrics like deal size, velocity and profitability.  That seems to be a next frontier in B2B social media.

Corporate websites becoming social media properties! Several of the panelists mentioned the integration of social into their corporate web sites, boosting the authenticity and trustworthiness of the information.  That will lead to stickier web interactions with prospects and customers.

That’s my top line.

If you’d like to see some of the slides the panelists shared with the audience, shoot me an email at pspenner@executiveboard.com. Oh, and lean on MLC’s social media resource center for all manner of support tools, templates, strategy builder workbooks, and more.

Till recently, most such examples of banks using new media innovatively have come from the West. But off late, I’ve seen banks in Asia also begin to tap channels such as social media and mobile quite innovatively. Here are 3 of my favorite uses of new media across Asia

DBS Bank’s Social Media Check-in Promo

What DBS Did: Singapore-based DBS Bank recently held a month-long Facebook Places and Deals campaign in Asia for Singapore, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Jakarta, and Taipei. Anyone who owned a mobile device could participate and earn points. Participants earned points by checking-in to a DBS Bank branch through DBS Places, successfully referring a Facebook friend, and points for each Facebook friend participating in the campaign. They could then redeem these points against merchant deals throughout the campaign.

I like it because: Instead of following an ad-hoc approach to using social media, DBS used social media strategically choosing to run the campaign across Asia. Moreover, recognizing that consumers are interested in deriving tangible value from brands on social media, DBS built in merchant deals in the campaign – a great way to engage both existing bank customers as well as potential customers.

Standard Chartered’s Breeze App

What Standard Chartered Did: A global bank, Standard Chartered launched its mobile app ‘Breeze’ in Singapore, and has since rolled it out in parts of Asia. What’s different about this app? A host of innovative features and a customer-friendly intuitive interface.

For example:

• WishList allows you to create and categorize multiple savings goals, track progress, and even let your Facebook friends know what you’re saving for.
• BreezeLiving informs you of all the deals available to the bank’s customers which you can avail of via location-based coupons.
• E-Check Service allows you to sign a check electronically on your computer or iPhone and the bank will automatically print and mail the check for you.

I like it because: Besides offering standard services such as bill pay or funds transfer to customers, it provides new-in-kind value through its innovative features leading to deeper customer relationships.

I also liked how StanChart promoted Breeze – after gauging the media consumption patterns of the target audience of this app, the bank primarily promoted it through social media.  The bank previewed the app before launch to bloggers, and also held an iPad giveaway campaign.

State Bank of India’s ‘SMS Unhappy’

What SBI Did: A few months ago, India’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI) launched a new customer service channel  – “SMS Unhappy”.

So, how does this service work? As a consumer, if you’re unhappy with any of the bank’s services, you can simply text ‘Unhappy’ to a specified number. The Bank’s Happy Room will call you, register the complaint, and also notify you once the problem is fixed.

I like it because: With ‘SMS Unhappy’, SBI not only tapped a new channel, it successfully changed customer perceptions of the brand. Specifically, SBI has created a more customer-friendly brand image, in line with its vision.

So, how are you using online and mobile channels to differentiate your brand?

Lack of executive buy-in. What’s the biggest driver of social media success at the organizational level? Evidence we’ve collected suggests that, unsurprisingly, it’s CMO buy-in. Why? Because social isn’t a typical channel investment; to achieve success, processes within the marketing organization (like marcomm approval and integration of customer voice) have to be sped up or revamped entirely.

What happens without buy-in? Nothing good; you’ll likely end up using social as just another advertising channel (a particularly ineffective one, at that), and not realizing the unique benefits a two-way conversation with consumers can provide.

Developing CMO leadership in this space is so important that we devoted an entire year of research to it – check out our findings!

Campaign-style thinking. Long-used to viewing marketing as a series of discrete efforts to induce some kind of customer action, marketers are prone to applying this paradigm to their social media efforts, as well. The idea is that, via social, brands will introduce a number of stimuli into the market, with the desired result of bigger sales, heightened brand awareness, or some other positive outcome. This model is strictly linear – message + distribution = customer result – and it has strict end and beginning dates.

By contrast, social media offers greatest returns when it’s thought of in a non-linear, open-ended way. An organization getting involved in social should be prepared for a few things – a) results not might be immediately measurable, in the way that traditional campaigns are and b) the commitment should be to enhance consumers’ lives over the long-term.

Want to avoid campaign-style thinking? Check out our resources on developing enduring social media strategies and content.

Focus on platforms and channels, not outcomes. It’s a common sentiment heard within marketing functions: “Of course we get social! We’re on Twitter!”

Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but this idea embeds an odd assumption that technologies – rather than conversations or utility – are what’s important about social media. Customers aren’t going to give you points for registering a Twitter handle and then being useless or unresponsive; they’re going to give you points for using a channel to improve their lives in some measurable way.

We counsel organizations considering starting or expanding their social presences to work backwards from two things: business objectives and customer needs. Does a particular channel fit those objectives and needs? Go for it! If not? Maybe you should still go for it, but proceed with caution.

Brand – not customer – centricity. Similar to the above, marketers often make a few mistakes when it comes to what consumers care about. A lot of times, the assumption is made that consumers want “brand engagement” – what this means in practice, we’re still not sure, but we’re guessing it means stuff like this:

I love you, Peanut Chews, but damn: is there an assumption out there that consumers care about stuff like this? And don’t just think it’s about niche candy brands – many of the biggest consumer brands in the world – including some of you reading this – do the same kind of stuff.

A few reasons why brand-centricity and “engagement” strategies are bad: first, there’s little evidence that consumers want to be engaged by brands in any serious way – most follow brands online in search of discounts; second, there is pretty good evidence that engagement efforts serve mostly to distract customers from the purchase path; and third, it takes valuable resources – including your budget, your staff’s time and the available well of consumer attention – away from higher-ROI efforts.

Inappropriate measurement practices. Even if you’ve managed to create lasting business and consumer impact via social, you run the risk of getting the plug pulled prematurely if you can’t communicate that impact in a way that the rest of the organization understands.

In order to do this well, you have to be measuring your efforts – but what, and how, should you measure? ROI is a notoriously-limited way of getting at the value of disruptive investments, but returns can be shown using a “bridge metric” model that measures indirect benefits like decreased customer care spend or offset marcomm spending in traditional channels.

How else do social efforts fail? Let us know in comments.

The latest tactics for breaking through increasingly high barriers to attention all have some serious limitations:

• Tactic: Create such attention-grabbing ads that consumers stop and watch or even actively seek them out (the Old Spice strategy). Limitation: There was only one Old Spice campaign last year. There’s just no process for reliably producing viral hits.

• Tactic: Encourage consumers to sign up to regular targeted communications e.g., email newsletters, mobile alerts, Twitter feeds, Facebook news feeds. Limitation: Marketing message saturation is hitting consumers’ inboxes and news feeds.  Soon it’ll be just as hard to stand out there as it is elsewhere.

• Tactic: Hyper-targeting, i.e., send such super-relevant messages that consumers take notice. Limitation: Marketers often underestimate the bar for relevance that has to be met before a consumer actually clicks on an ad. Even with new data and automation tools, hyper-targeting is still pretty hard.

Leading marketers realize this and are adding an extra strategy to the mix. Instead of doing more to get consumers’ attention, they’re doing more to get through to consumers WITHOUT their full attention.  MLC members, we recently added a set of tips on low-attention branding to our website. Here are the basic steps to take:

Redesign ads/packaging to maximize unconscious information absorption. Consumers do absorb some information even when they’re not really paying attention. Marketers are now turning to new technologies, e.g., eye tracking, pulse/sweat sensors and even brain scans, to help present information in the most compelling and natural manner.

Establish routines around product use. Product routines secure repeat purchase without the need for in-your-face reminders.  The problem is, disrupting existing habits and cementing new ones is incredibly hard.  See how one CPG managed it here.

Publish useful or entertaining content on consumers’ interests with subtle branding in the background. Instead of forcing consumers to pay attention to explicit ads, brands are creating interesting/fun content and hoping the subtle background branding will create positive associations. Learn more here.

Identify and activate consumer cravings. Better understanding of cravings also helps boost product use without the need for explicit messages around product benefits etc. Some marketers of consumable products are turning to fMRI brain scans to identify the precise moment of consumption that provides the biggest dopamine hit. Creating ads focused on these moments improves effectiveness when consumers are only half-listening.  See  how a CPG used brain scanning to identify and activate consumer cravings here.

MLC members, learn more about low-attention branding, and consider taking this anonymous 7-minute survey on future trends in marketing. We will share aggregate results with all survey takers to give you a sense of how your peers think marketing is evolving. Thank you!

That’s just one of the questions an expert panel will address at next week’s Sales and Marketing conference, hosted by CEB in Las Vegas.  The panelists will include:

• Anne Plese, who works in line marketing with Cisco Systems and has extensive experience integrating social media into the marketing mix.
• Tom Vaughn, who heads up social media within Microsoft’s central marketing group.  Tom has been building social media infrastructure and best practice within Microsoft for the past year or so.
• Deirdre Walsh, now at Jive Software, but formerly with National Instruments, where she played ringmaster for social media efforts across the NI enterprise.

As the panel moderator, I’ll also ask them to share their advice for B2B organizations that are just starting on their social media journey.  As well, we’ll learn how they think about integrating social media into other marketing and commercial activities—they all believe this is a critical part of creating real business value with social media in a B2B context.

If you have other questions you’d like to hear the panel address, let us know by commenting below.

If you’ll be in Vegas with us next week, I hope to see you at the social media session.  If you aren’t able to join us, look for a blog post late next week with key takeaways from the panel.

But evidence is emerging – not the least of which, from our 2011 B2C research – that paid media is becoming less and less effective in terms of driving sales and positive brand sentiment. It’s up to marketers to find the channels that consumers trust most, and re-optimize spend for those platforms.

Just as a review, here are the three broad buckets of media spend we’re thinking about:

Paid Media: Channels that you pay for (TV, radio, print, billboards, retail displays, online ads)

Owned Media: Channels that you own (website, blog, building, uniform, vehicles, product itself), or partially own (facebook page, twitter page, YouTube channel)

Earned Media: Consumers become the channel (PR, WOM, mentions in blogs, tweets,  or product reviews), which you can neither buy nor own

Typically, marketers use a PEO framework, where they start with Paid media first, then look to Earned, and put least focus on Owned. Some of the beliefs that drive them to do this are:

Myth #1: We don’t have budgetary limitations, so we don’t require earned media.

Some marketers and agencies put most of their resources on paid media and the leftovers are spent on earned media. Only when they’re tight on budget, they plan their entire or most of their marketing strategy around the earned media. In effect, they push down earned media’s status to a “media of last resort.”

Reality: While it’s easy to “buy” media, it’s not really easy to create the “buy-in.” With so much information overload, consumers have become highly insensitive to traditional media (Kogi BBQ learnt this the hard way). What they actually value is information that comes from credible sources. I’m sure when Mercedes-Benz wanted to capitalize on Google executive’s testimonial, cost-saving wasn’t the motivation. Rather, it was the credibility of the source that Mercedes wanted to leverage.

While earned media is relatively cheaper than paid, it is certainly not free. Nor it is easy or quick. The cost of buying media gets shifted to cost of creating and managing content. Even if the companies now will need to become creative thinkers to develop and plan content, the ROI is still better compared to paid media.

Myth #2: Earned media can’t be controlled, so there is no point planning for it.

Some marketers fear that since they don’t have any control over the reach and impact of earned media, they’ll end up wasting dollars, or probably even worse—earning negative WOM.

Reality: Though the control may not be “completely” in your hands, but with some thoughtful planning, you can initiate and drive the conversation in your favor. Generate curiosity (Kaizers Orchestra did it by launching a record on paper), create value (Best Buy’s Twelpforce), empathize (J&J’s Baby Center), or just challenge the conventions (Men With Cramps! Really?), and Voilà! You’ve influenced the influencers.

Further, owned media is a low-hanging fruit that can play a significant role in driving your influence. Brands use their website, twitter page, facebook page, or YouTube channel to seed content. Even the product (customized M&Ms), the packaging (Bronx shoes), and the distribution (Coke’s uVend) can be creatively utilized.

Are the flaws in PEO apparent now?

Imagine turning the PEO framework upside down and making it OEP. That is, try to capitalize on Owned first and use it as a driver to initiate Earned, then focus your strategy on increasing and sustaining Earned, and if necessary seek Paid support.

Earned media should play a “central role” in the marketing strategy, while owned and paid play “supporting partners.”

By the way, while you were reading this post, the brands mentioned above just earned some more media for themselves. So next time you meet your agencies, ask them (a few weeks ago, we wrote about how agencies should transform in the new advertising landscape) to utilize your budget in a way that gives you more dividends, and that too, sustainable.