Sponsoring the upcoming Consumer Goods Sales and Marketing Summit (#CGSM13) got me thinking about life in the consumer good space.  Being a consumer product company was never easy, I suppose. But it certainly WAS easier.  There was a time when a CPG company controlled the messaging, the pricing, and what customers knew about the product. 

It’s no secret that social media has forever changed the nature of CPG and retail operations. Customers bypass your official sales and support channels in favor of product review sites, Twitter and Facebook. Increasingly pricing (and certainly margin) is often outside of our control as the internet and global commerce has fueled a race to the bottom for all but the most premium brands.  And your customers’ expectations about products, service, and support are no longer yours to set. 

Life in the CPG channel has gotten a lot more complicated in the last few years.  Sure – it’s easier for consumers to talk about your products (Amazon Reviews, Yelp!, Facebook, etc.)  But increasingly consumers want to talk use these channels to talk to EACH OTHER, and not necessarily to you.    When they do reach out (asking for help… offering a suggestion…or making a complaint) you need to respond – quickly – and confidently.

Another challenge facing the modern CPG marketer is the need to need to leverage the vast majority of insights being made (freely) available to them over social media channels. Surely of the 50,000 conversations that mention your products and brands every month there are a few important nuggets of information in there, right?

As I see it there are two separate, but equally important tasks that need to be integrated into the modern Consumer Good marketers’ diary every day. 

1. Listen to your customers on Social Media
2. Engage with your customers on Social Media.

Listen to your consumers

Chances are it won’t always be good – but listen anyway.  The conversations about your soup – or your batteries – or your light bulbs – or your cell phones will give you insights into what customers DON’T tell you in your focus group.

I see Social Media Listening as providing the path to a few critical workflows in the Consumer Goods space-

• Tracking historical and real time Brand Analysis
• Measuring the effectiveness of Marketing Campaigns and Product launches by segment
• Determining the market influencers who matter most in each of your market spaces
• Track and leverage consumer purchase intent before the consumer reaches the point of purchase or selects a competitor product.
• Monitor competitive Intelligence real-time
• Accelerate Product Innovation

 
Engage with your customers

Sometimes consumers have questions about product support.  Or about the nutritional information of your products.  Sometimes they are more nuanced questions best routed to your investor relations people.  Or sometimes we’ve just messed up consumers are looking to us to make it right.

Some people hold to the belief that there is too low a ‘signal to noise’ ratio on Social Media to warrant engaging with customers when they reach out on Twitter (as an example). But I disagree.  If a customer (or a potential customer) cares enough to reach out (even in frustration) – we have an obligation to engage with them. Perhaps we can solve their problem with a link to a YouTube video – and prevent a product being returned to a retailer. Or perhaps we can save an unhappy long term customer who just had an unfortunate experience with one of our products.

Either way – Social Media as a customer engagement strategy helps companies-

• Preserve customer loyalty
• Reduce the number of calls coming in through more expensive channels such as telephone or retail
• Drive down product returns related to technical or misapplication
• Foster the reputation of a company who cares about their consumers experience with our products.

So there is no doubt that being a consumer good company has changed.  Maybe it hasn’t gotten harder… just different.   Or maybe you’re one of the best… and you’ve already turned your social media strategy into a competitive advance. 

If you want to understand how T-Mobile – one of America’s leading wireless carriers is leveraging Social Media to delight their customers in the highly competitive cell phone market – listen to this rebroadcast of a recent webinar.  Their Digital shares some great insights into the role that Social Media is playing in helping them re-imagine the wireless market. 

If these conversations about CG products has you nodding your head and saying “Yep… so now what?” I want to share with you that SAP will be featuring a number of solutions at the upcoming CGT Sales & Marketing Summit that address the opportunities associated with Big Data for Sales & Marketing. Please follow @SAP_CP to stay up on the CGT Sales & Marketing social media conversation as we approach the CGT Summit in New York. We’ll be Tweeting using the hashtag combination #SAP and #CGT2013.

Please visit with us to see how our new solutions for Demand Signal Management, Retail Execution, Trade Promotion Management and Optimization, and Social Media Analytics can address your big data opportunities.  For more CGT Sales & Marketing Summit information, check out the full conference agenda online.

Craig R. Downing
SAP Global Cloud Marketing
@cdowning

Remember that great quote from John Wanamaker?  You probably first heard it in your marketing 101 class.  “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”  Then a couple semesters later in your Finance 101 class you got clubbed over the head over the importance of calculating ROI in advance of every investment.  And ever since then you’ve struggled to reconcile the art and the science of marketing.

Today you’re an all grown up marketing executive (congratulations, by the way.) But you’re still trying to figure out exactly WHAT the ROI of your marketing programs are. And chances are you’re afraid to even think about the ROI of your Social Media investments.  Can you capture the ROI on your social media programs?  Is there a better KPI to use?  Are their ROI benchmarks?  Or are you just afraid of the CODN?  (Cost of Doing Nothing.) 

Admit it… (c'mon notbody’s listening.  It’s just you…me…and the internet.)  The very idea of Social Media ROI can be overwhelming.  What exactly is a ‘Friend’ worth?  A Tweet? A Check In?  A Yelp review?  Should you be worrying about all of this?  Or any of it? 

Thankfully, there are some smart people thinking about it.  And talking about it.

It's been an interesting couple weeks for those who post online reviews..and those who are at the mercy of them.

Conversations about the credibility and independence of reviews on Yelp, Amazon, Angieslist and other sites have been dinner table topic for social media pundits for years.   Yes - sometimes the waiter is rude.  The product didn't work.  Or the reservation agent was disinterested in your plight.  But how do we decide when to pick up the social media megaphone and complain in public... and when to just chalk it up to a single bad experience.  

The last couple days has seen a lot of great coverage on these topics.  On one hand - the relevance and importance of the online reviews (and the damage a poor review can have on a business) has never been greater (a recent SAP study reports).

At the same time, the decision to 'go legal' to defend against (arguably unwarranted) negative reviews appears to be an increasingly popular option.  Click here to read about this trend.     What happens when a single (stupid) action by one employee (that would have gone unnoticed 5 years ago by the internet echo chamber)  threatens to destroy a small business?    Who is the Social Megaphone helping or hurting here?

What say you?  Have online reviews become a sniping ground for competitors and petty complaints?  As a brand when would you choose to 'go nuclear' and call in the lawyers to defend your brand against a negative review?  Where is that line? 

(And I ask as someone who personally is struggling to resist posting a negative review about my last car rental experience - with 2 weeks passing since I contacted their so-called customer "service" department to fix it.)

Love holiday shopping or hate it – it’s become a Thanksgiving tradition for many Americans. And while I personally can’t imaging camping out overnight to buy a TV set (more of an online shopper myself), there is no doubt that American shoppers are a ‘house divided’ when it comes to their preference for the traditional retail storefront “Black Friday” vs. “Cyber Monday” sales.

Often I’m asked for my insights into how social media helps enterprises better understand customer behaviors and insights.  Here’s a perfect example – a project we did in partnership with Chain Store Age magazine. (How price sensitive are online shoppers compared to physical retail shoppers? Have we broken the barrier to online fashion retailing?  Is ‘Cyber Monday’ still a thing given the pervasiveness of residential broadband?)

No matter your preference (Black Friday or Cyber Monday) you might find the differences interesting.

Check it out here

When it comes to SAP Social Media we’ve had a couple fantastic webcasts this week (if I do say so myself.)  

If you’re looking to understand more about how leading retailers are applying social media to drive an increased share of wallet, larger basket size, and greater shopper loyalty – you’ll want to spend an hour watching this video – a joint production between SAP, the National Retail Federation Stores Magazine, and BazaarVoice. We got together to talk about how leading retailers are using social media to have better conversations with their customers.  (click the screen below to play the webcast on demand.)

If you’re looking for a solid primer on the role that social media is playing in optimizing the customer experience at brands such as Dell, L.L. Bean, and Jet Blue we’ve got you covered there as well. Check out this great webcast discussing the results of our recent Social Customer Index Report  (also available for download here)   Click the screen grab below to begin playback of the event and hear how the 'best of the best' are harnessing the power of Social Media in the Enterprise.