Social Media, Enterprise Marketing, and Video at Cisco

I just had the chance to hear a BlogWell audiocast of  Jeanette Gibson, Director of New Media Corporate Communication at Cisco speaking on what Cisco is doing with Social Media.

There was way too much good content to cover here, but one thing that jumped out at me was the increasing use of video in Cisco Social Media Marketing.  Some key points from the discussion:

Cisco Video Blogging

• One of the key uses of Social Media at Cisco is to drive industry Thought Leadership.    Cisco Blogs
• About 25% of all Cisco blogs now include video.
• Executives are encouraged to video-blog what they are doing any time it is of general interest.
• Including video is made relatively easy through Cisco’s recent acquisition of Flip Video products.

Cisco Product Launches and Telepresence

• Product launches at Cisco are moving to worldwide Telepresence events.
• Product launches have evolved to become “media conditioning.”  The work starts with Cisco vision and strategy communication up to three months before the actual launch date.  This builds interest in the event and allows for customer and partner input to evolve the message.
• Cisco partners and customers participate in the event live via Cisco Telepresence.
• Cisco used blogs, video, and Twitter to engage with customer.  Customer comments and requests for information have significantly increased compared to conventional product launch events.
• Cisco has reduced the cost of launch events by 75% while making the audience feel more directly engaged.

Managing Employee Social Media Activity

• There has been internal discussion about “corporate brand” versus “personal brand.” Cisco has decided that personal brand is ok.  The key reason is that all business is personal.
• In the age of social media the important thing is to be open and transparent.
• Cisco general rules of thumb for employees on Social Media are:
  • No Cisco-confidential information
  • Behave as you would on email – Use good manners
  • Use your real identity.  No anonymity.
  • Be yourself
  • Listen.

Enterprise B2B: Just How Open Makes Sense?

I just finished reading “The Open Brand” by Kelly Mooney and Nina Rollins.” In it, the authors describe how the one-way-push style of marketing typical to Web 1.0 is giving way to a two-way communication style of marketing in Web 2.0.  Just as the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 technology is physically enabling a “read-write Web,” it is also enabling a whole new communication style with customers that will create a more engaged relationship with greater brand affinity and loyalty.

The authors argue the need for an O.P.E.N. brand strategy:

On-demand.  Always open for business.

Personal.  Remember your customer preferences and treat them as individuals.

Engaging.  Build an immersive, participatory, and relevant dialogue with customers.

Networked.  Open brands are active participants in the social network.

The book goes on to argue that brands should not only listen and have two-ways conversations with customers but that they should loosen their control of brands, letting customers participate in brand positioning, have direct input to brand messaging, and influence product definition.

This all probably sounds slightly radical and it is easy to say that it only applies the the B2C consumer world.  Enterprise B2B companies are much more used to carefully controlling their brands and messaging.  After all, “we’re the experts on these technologies, aren’t we?”  This is a very dangerous state of mind indeed.

Web 2.0 is enabling the type of customer relationships that customers have wanted all along:

• Customers want to be asked their opinion.
• Customers want to be able to get the advice of respected peers
• Customers want to hear from peers “who have actually done it.”
• Customers are literally dying to provide product feedback and suggestions.
• Customers want to be able to communicate in many media, print, online, voice, video.
• Customers don’t want “drive-by selling,” they want a relationship with the vendor.
• Finally, as travel budgets and time become more scarce, customers want to be able to participate and find information on-demand.

These trend are happening in both B2B and B2C.  The companies who understand what their customers want, provide an engaging brand experience and truly listen will have a serious leg up on their competition.

A number of executives resist Social Media due to negative public relations events such as the “United Breaks Guitars” firestorm.  Remember, social media was not the cause of this event, but it could be the best way to deal with negative events like this and minimize their impact by:

• Early detection of the issue
• An honest and forthright response to the issue
• Communication of the resolution of the issue (Hopefully, somewhere before you get into the millions of YouTube views.)

The bottom line is that Social Media is happening with or without your company’s involvement.  Current customers, potential customers, press and analysts are talking about your brands and products online every day.  The question is:  Are you going to actively participate, or are you going to let external forces position you?

I will be writing about how some Enterprise B2B companies are using Social Media in future blogs.

Who Are Your Customers Listening To?

When your customers look to make a buying a decision, where do they go for their information on your product? Your Web site or somewhere else? There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that many of these information searches start with Google. So what sources are your customers using?

The 2009 Nielsen Global Media Survey summary published by NetworkWorld reported that:

• 90% of Internet consumers worldwide trust recommendations from people they know.

• 70% of Internet consumers trust consumer opinions posted online.

• 70% of Internet consumers also trusted brand Web sites.

This is good news and bad news for professionals who are marketing and selling technology products and services to enterprises.

Things are not as bad as some other articles would have you believe. Consumer Generated Media (CGM) is not the only source that customers trust anymore. The survey above is of all Internet consumers. It is reasonable to assume that enterprise technology consumers will be somewhat more conservative than the general population. This means that they have not discarded brand Web sites. The challenge for enterprise marketeers, is to win and keep their customers trust. That requires a marketing commitment to truthfulness, openness, and fact-based information.

The other inescapable trend here is that your customers are also look at other sources of information before they make a decision. It’s a clear case of “trust but verify” out there and nobody is more trusted than respected peers who have direct experience with the same technology and products. As early as 2004 Forrester Research reported that “Recommendations from other Consumers” was the most trusted form of advertising.

Download the full Nielsen Report including the Forrester Research survey results.

This presents yet another challenge for enterprise marketing professionals: How do you find out what information sources your customers and prospective customers are using and trusting?

Five Ways to Find Out Who Your Customers Are Listening To:

1. Ask them every time you have a customer meeting or customer call.

2. Ask them when you interact in online customer forums.

3. Ask them every time you have a customer council. You do have customer councils don’t you?

4. Ask them in an online survey. Two rules: a) Keep to a few very short questions , b) Give them an incentive to want to participate (opt-in)

5. Travel to live events, conferences, trade shows, and forums and ask the attendees what information sources they trust

Suggestion: Track your results and keep a separate count for Current Customers and Prospective Customers. If there is a difference between the two groups, that will be critical to the success of your marketing plans.

Aside from knowing who your customers are and what their business problems are, this is probably the next most important thing a marketing professional can know.

Hello World!

Welcome to Enterprise Social Media Marketing!

I plan to start a lively discussion about how to apply Social Media to the area of marketing technology products to Enterprise customers.  First, let’s be clear: there is a lot of good practice out there in the area of enterpise marketing that are worth keeping.

This presents us with some interesting questions:

• How is enterprise marketing being changed by Social Media? (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.)
• What is not being changed by Social Media and remains good practice?
• How do you make “traditional marketing” and Social Media work together for entreprise technology customers?
• Where are the opportunities to serve your customers better, build community, and ultimately deliver a better product or service?

The answers to all of these things will be evolving with the advances in Social Media.  This blog is intended to be a forum to exchange best practices and ideas for making enterprise marketeers more successful.

Your input and comments are very much welcomed and appreciated.

It Still Starts (and Ends) With the Customer

So, you are looking to build a Social Media marketing plan for your technology-based product or service.  Where to start?  The basics have not really changed a lot here:

Five questions to start your Social Media marketing plan:

1. Who is your target customer?  It sound simple, but a lot of business have crashed and burned right here because they did not have a clear picture of who is using their products and why. There is a very interesting story of how Ford Motor is trying to turn itself around by going back to customer definition.
2. What customer problems does my product solve?  If you cannot articulate this clearly and succinctly, then nobody will be interested in what you have.
3. Why is it better than the other competitive products out there?
4. Why will customers pay for this product or service?  We are in a global recession.  What will make customers part with money right now?
5. Are there enough customers out there with this problem who are willing to buy?  Is this a definable market segment?  Can you later grow into adjacent market segments if you are successful?

Now that we have the basic marketing out of the way, we can get down to how your product is purchased.   The question is: Who is involved in the process?

• Who uses the product or service?
• Who purchases the product?  Not necessarily the same as the user.
• Who approves the purchase?  Examples: Line of Business VP, CIO, CFO.
• Who within the company influences the purchase? This is where is gets tricky.  It could be a architect-type person, a LoB expert with a problem, or in the case of a viral product the end users themselves.
• Who outside of the company influences the purchase?  This is changing and we will talk more about this in later blogs.

OK, now to the Community part of this discussion.  Social Media marketing is all about building a community where your customers can become part of a two-way discussion, getting them involved with your brand experience, getting them to use your product, and ultimately building an engaging relationship to the point where they become enthusiastic recommenders of your product who play an active role in the community.

The challenge of Social Media marketing is to find the right tools to build the right types of forums for your key target communities to participate in.  These forums become extensions of your brand identity and brand experience.  Also, this is not a one-size-fits-all excercise.  For example, you will (at least) want to consider two discussion tracks:

• A Business Discussion where business people can talk about business benefits, TCO, ROI and customer experiences and success stories.
• A Technical Discussion where they experts can discuss the technical details of the product, it’s deployment and administration.  This group can find the business discussion annoying.

We will be talking more about many of these topics in future blogs.