Research: January 2009 Archives
Here at Razorfish, we're seeing Social Influence Marketing touch many parts of our business. Needless to say advertising campaigns is one of them too. With our strong quantitative roots, we're spending a lot of time figuring out the ROI impact of social. Marc Sanford and a few others have been spending time on the viral engagement piece of it specifically. The details have been released in a report titled, "Social Media Measurement: Widgets and Applications" and the findings are interesting.
The data shows that the more deeply engaged someone is with social media, the more likely he is to make a purchase. More specifically, there's a noticeable difference between those who engage with widgets through media versus those who are referred by friends. Those who were referred to the widgets by friends were four times as likely to download the application. They were also more likely to spend much more money on the client site and more time there too on average.
The other major findings include how dramatically "engagement" effects page views and revenue. The following charts demonstrate that consumers who spend 5+ minutes with a widget spend significantly more time and view more page views on a given publisher's web site. We found a similar impact on revenue, where engagement with a widget for 5+ minutes had large revenue upsides.
We know measurement of social media is important but those numbers tell us a few important things. Firstly, we listen to our friends more than we pay attention to advertisements. It also demonstrates the importance of widgets and distributing content. And as we've highlighted in our Feed reports, it furthers the point that there can be very strong connections between off domain activity and on domain purchasing behavior. Widgets are the trojan horses for a brand.
Discuss this with more on Twitter and also check out Garrick's post for more insights.
Last year when I first started talking about peer and anonymous influence and social influence marketing, it was new to most people. My research at the London School of Economics & Political Science had given me a fairly unique perspective on how social influence works and why it matters. It amazing how much changes in a year as the subject has become extremely topical and recognized across the board as being important to marketing. In fact, personal influence is one of Harvard Business Review's Breakthrough Top Ideas for 2009!
Take a look at this presentation from someone I met while I was down speaking at the Social Networking Conference in Miami late last week. He's exploring the different types of peer influence focusing on the details around the user experience. Good stuff.
Take a look at this presentation from someone I met while I was down speaking at the Social Networking Conference in Miami late last week. He's exploring the different types of peer influence focusing on the details around the user experience. Good stuff.
As the recession hits us the pundits are busy prophesying what the downturn means for marketing and digital in particular. Marketers themselves are focused increasingly on direct response activities, as Christmas sales look dismal. But it is at this very time, that marketers need to retool their departments and organize for the future. Just as the downturn has turned innovation into a necessity from being the luxury it once was so too must the innovative thinking be applied to how marketing departments are organized.
Today a typical marketer’s existing cost structure is probably already untenable, his core customers are aren’t as loyal as they once were and his products aren’t flying off the shelves as they did six months ago. How can the marketer respond to these worrying circumstances? What does it mean to restructure a marketing department? We believe the answer is by organizing the marketing department to truly take advantage of social influence marketing.
This article was written with Andrea Harrison and was first published in Slant.
Continue reading Reflecting on the Third Dimension of Marketing.
