Competition as anOpportunity:The ROI of SocialCompetitive InsightAcross a Product Lifecycle

9th in the Social Media ROI Series

With Connie Bensen

LLEETT’’SS TTAALLKK::Social Media ROI

Whitepaper

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Social Competitive Insight Across a Product Lifecycle

Competition as an Opportunity

Executive Summary:

The competition is no longer a threat. In the past, it was difficult to get solid competitive information in a legal manner. Today, competitiveintelligence in the web 2.0 world is not only much easier and cheaper, but it’s readily available to brands of all sizes. Online social networksnot only allow the opportunity to watch what competitors are doing as they market their products, but also offer up products as a choice. Itis also quite easy to see the commentary on how competitors’ products are being received by looking at the sentiment around them. Yousimply need to be listening to the conversations! This whitepaper is the ninth in the Social Media ROI Series, Let’s Talk!

The social web has created a new business forum. Social media marketing makes it easy for brands to take their products to market. It alsocreates incredible opportunities for competitive intelligence that never existed before. A social media monitoring tool can gathercompetitive insights that can be used across the product lifecycle to increase a brand’s bottom line.

This series of white papers has discussed how social media monitoring can impact every team in an organization. It is frequently advised tomonitor for the competition, and this paper will outline specific ways to leverage that information, why it is important to do so, and therelated ROI.

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Social Competitive Insight Across a Product Lifecycle

Competition as an Opportunity

Most companies dedicate the bulk of their market research budget to analyzing and reporting on theirtarget markets, customers and prospects. What about that of the competitors? It is now possible to gatherinformation via a social media monitoring tool on specific products, industry and geographic information. Atool can provide demographic information on where consumers interact online and offline. An analysis ofthis same information, in regard to competitive products, can provide insight into:

• New market opportunities, both online and offline

• Driving marketing from mass marketing to one-to-one

• Informing supply chain decisions

• Communities that need and want the products and solutions

A social media monitoring tool can provide insights into customers’ preferences at every point of thebuying cycle. This information is invaluable for guiding content creation.

Are your products developed in a vacuum? Does your company really know what consumers want and findvalue in? Sometimes, customers don’t provide the best predictions of their needs and wants. They areclose to the products, and this doesn’t allow them to be open to new ideas. There is a very small chancethat they will contribute innovative ideas due to their perceptions. This is even more true of developerswho work with the products day in and day out.

In considering that, it’s important to understand what consumers want, and more importantly, what theydon’t want. What will deter them from buying? Analyzing the industry trends and competitive informationwill open this conversation and provide insight into what is necessary for product development. The ROIbecomes obvious when those products gain the support of the industry.

Another strategy to consider is using conversations from the social web to do a gap analysis on thefollowing:

• What your competitors offer your target customers

• Competitors’ strengths and weaknesses

• Industry trends

• Influencers’ blogs

This gap analysis offers many opportunities to evolve your products and prevent them from beingdeveloped in the aforementioned vacuum.

Market Research

Product Development

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Social Competitive Insight Across a Product Lifecycle

Competition as an Opportunity

Competitive insight from the social web offers considerable advantages to product marketing.Demonstrating ROI is easy because it will save money on traditional methodologies for competitiveresearch, such as clipping service, library fees, and research and subscriptions to periodicals. Moreimportantly, a social media monitoring tool provides:

• Sentiment around competitors’ products and brands

• Specific marketing strategies and tactics of the competitors

• Differentiating features for positioning

The tool makes it as easy to establish metrics around the overall brand sentiment for competitors as foryour own brand, and this information can be used to direct your marketing strategy and messages. Manybrands use leak tactics in marketing their products. A social media monitoring tool will identify those assoon as possible and provide you with insight the minute it is available, rather than with the typical delayassociated with mainstream channels. This allows you to be proactive rather than reactive. Competitivefeatures gathered from the social web become instrumental in identifying how to position and price yourproducts. Combine that information with the sentiment, and your marketing efforts will have a much higherprobability of connecting with consumers. The ROI is higher sales due to a highly targeted message thatresonates with the target audience.

A social media monitoring tool is critical upon product launch because it allows you to actively:

• Facilitate brand building

• Identify opportunities to offer choices to those talking about competitors’ products

• Increase the frequency of high quality inbound leads

• Identify advocates and communities

Social channels offer B2B companies the same marketing options that B2C companies have. A social mediamonitoring tool brings the conversations about competitors to you on a daily basis. A commitment tojoining every conversation the competitor is involved in will build brand awareness. This is an excellenttactic for a brand with lesser brand visibility. Over a short time, the brand presence will become equalized.(It is important to make sure that excellent social etiquette is practiced when doing this. Make sure that youprovide value and offer a choice. This is extremely important in order for it not to be construed asspamming.) It is effective because people love choices. Often times, they actually enquire about options,such as, “Are there products other than ‘competitor’?” As consumers specifically ask for the type ofproduct that they need, they are more apt to consider your products and convert. The ROI is more salesthan cold calling and increased brand visibility. This increases word of mouth and reduces marketing costs.

This type of engagement is an excellent opportunity for sales to directly develop relationships withprospects. The tool will identify brand advocates and communities where supporters congregate. Havingsales join the conversations with these people will ensure that those interested in the products will havedirect access to them.

Identification ofDifferentiators,Positioning and Pricing

Building Brand Visibilityand Driving Sales

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Social Competitive Insight Across a Product Lifecycle

Competition as an Opportunity

Case Study: The Movie Industry

The movie industry is an excellent example of a product that is greatlyimpacted by social channels. The internet is directly influencing movie-goers. It used to be that box office results would drive people to thetheaters. Now people are reporting on the success or, even moreimportantly, the failure of a film directly. This is greatly affecting attendancebefore box office results are even reported. This is going to force the movie industry to embracesocial media marketing and interact directly with their potential audiences. Previews used to belimited to movie trailers, but now there are opportunities to have conversations on Twitter and buildanticipation through Facebook.

The customers are in charge of brands now. They demand excellent customer service, and that can be asignificant differentiator between your brand and the competition. Many services are Software as a Service(SaaS) or include specific monthly service contracts. Monitoring the competitors will identify where they fallshort. Which aspects of product or service do people find particularly gratifying? What aspects irritateconsumers? Mine the competitive data and gather the insights; meld that with market research and use itto drive strategic planning.

The most important aspect of integrating competitive insight from the social web is to have executive levelsupport. There is no reason to listen if there is no plan for follow through. There must be a systematicapproach for incorporating the insights gathered into the respective functional business unit. That is theonly way to realize the maximum ROI. Over time, the efforts will become more cross-functional andseamless, but this will require executive level sponsorship.

Do you know who the top talent is in your industry? A social media monitoring tool can support HumanResources in their efforts to recruit high quality people. Manish Mehta, VP of Global Online for Dell statedthat Dell considers LinkedIn more important than resumes. In addition, many companies utilize socialnetworks such as Twitter and Facebook in their recruitment efforts. They are seeking employees that arefluent in these new channels.

Customer Service

Closing the Loop at theExecutive Level

Identify Top Talent

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Social Competitive Insight Across a Product Lifecycle

Competition as an Opportunity

The social web allows businesses of every size to find deep insight into what the competitors are doing andgauge the consumers’ response. This information can be easily gathered, melded into traditional marketresearch and incorporated into product development.

Consumers make it very easy to gather competitive information by sharing their likes and dislikes online insocial channels. They base their future buying decisions on their own experiences and those of others. It’simportant to gather that feedback and ensure that you provide excellent customer service. Overall,consistent competitive listening provides brands with inside information at a very low cost and will result increating more competitive products, minimizing wasted resources and ultimately, increasing sales.

Case Study: Predicting the Success of the Fall TV Show Line-Ups

Imagine if you are an advertiser... Where would you like to invest your budget? Would it be in themost popular show or the one that generates a lackluster response? A social media monitoring toolgathers the insight of public response on the social web and gives insight into how the competitorsare doing. This provides guidance for the networks to make decisions on programming, marketing,advertising and longevity. The amount of buzz and sentiment about TV programs can predict theirsuccess or failure.

The following is a brief overview of the fall 2010 lineup from ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, FX, NBC andHBO. The results from Alterian SM2 provide a review of the online response to these networks’newest TV programs and their predicted success. Each network could use this information to assessthe marketing and advertising strategies for their programs.

This chart shows the amount of buzz around each program. S#*! My Dad Says garners the largest volumeof conversation with Hawaii 5.0 not far behind.

Conclusion

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Social Competitive Insight Across a Product Lifecycle

Competition as an Opportunity

The following charts show the results for programs aired on each network. The information for eachnetwork provides invaluable insight in regard to public response to their programs. It will indicate whatpeople liked and what they did not. And more importantly, it is possible to see the specific reasons foraudience responses. Patterns and trends can be identified in what resonated with specific age groups invarious regions. These demographic trends contain very useful competitive insight. Each chart provides theopportunity to drill into the data and review individual comments:

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Social Competitive Insight Across a Product Lifecycle

Competition as an Opportunity

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Social Competitive Insight Across a Product Lifecycle

Competition as an Opportunity

The predictions, based on public sentiment and commentary, are outlined below. CBS and HBO have theopportunity to engage in social channels and build on the momentum, utilizing social media marketing.FOX and NBC may need to consider creating a social strategy (or adjusting it if they have one.)

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Social Competitive Insight Across a Product Lifecycle

Competition as an Opportunity

About the “Let’sTalk” Series withConnie Bensen

Social Media marketing is providing a whole new dimension for brands to connect with consumers. Thesocial web is a vast entity and every marketer needs a tool to harness the information in the most costeffective and efficient manner. A social media monitoring tool offers the ability to maximize the digitalportion of your marketing budget in order to create, execute, measure and report on a social mediastrategy.

The Let's Talk Series, by Connie Bensen, is a series of 10 whitepapers describing the variety of ways thatmarketers can increase the ROI of their marketing efforts. Topics will include how to use a social mediamonitoring tool for SEO, Lead Generation, Social Media campaigns, Customer Service, CompetitiveInsight, Corporate marketing, PR and reputation management, etc.

Connie is the Director of Social Media and Community Strategy at Alterian, which provides marketingsoftware to help brands engage with their customers. She is a key voice amongst online CommunityManagers. Her blog, www.conniebensen.com is recognized as a leading resource for cultivating onlinecommunities, providing best practices for this emerging role and it is listed in Forbes.com as one of the 20Best Marketing and Social Media Blogs by Women.

Alterian’s SM2 is a social media monitoring and analysis solution designed for PR andMarketing professionals. SM2 helps you track conversations, review positive/negativesentiment for your brand, clients, competitors and partners across social media channelssuch as blogs, wikis, micro-blogs, social networks, video/photo sharing sites and real-timealerts.

Alterian (LSE: ALN) empowers organizations to create relevant, effective and engaging experiences withtheir audience that help build value and reinforce commitment to their brand, through the use of theAlterian Integrated Marketing Platform. Alterian drives the transformation of marketing andcommunications, making it practical and cost-effective for companies to orchestrate multichannelengagement with the individual.

Alterian’s unprecedented integration of analytics, content and execution through industry leading tools,such as the Dynamic Messenger email platform, SM2 Social Media Monitoring platform and the awardwinning Content Management solutions, enables companies to build integrated communication strategieswhich create a true picture of the individual.

Alterian works with marketing services partners, system integrators and agencies who recognize the needto plan and deliver coordinated customer engagement services in partnership with their clients. For moreinformation about Alterian, products within the Alterian Integrated Marketing Platform or Alterian’s PartnerNetwork, visit www.alterian.com or the Alterian blog at www.engagingtimes.com.

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