P2P versus B2B, B2C Marketing: Why People-to-People is Important
January 12, 2011 by Jimson Lee · 2 Comments
The SuperBowl XLV is approaching.
Yes, THE 2011 SuperBowl, but why they still use roman numerals is beyond me.
How much does it costs for a 30 second ad?
$3 Million for a single 30 seconds commercial.
What is the potential reach?
106 Million viewers in 2010 and 98.7 Million in 2009.
When you think about media, how many years did it take to reach 10 million eyeballs? or 100 million viewers?
I am talking about traditional media, such as newspaper, radio and TV, including Superbowl TV ads.
I think a lot of companies are not aware of the impact of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
100 million targeted viewers may be a lot of money for 3 million dollars, but go ask entertainer Justin Bieber who has over 430 million views for a single video! I doubt he spent 3 million dollars on that video.
It took TV and radio decades to reach 50 million viewers, but only months for Facebook to reach those same numbers.
In my opinion, traditional B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing efforts are becoming less and less effective.
By definition, P2P may mean peer-to-peer (i.e. Napster, Limewire, Torrents, etc.) but it also means people-to-people.
Branding is a personal issue, from the smartphone you choose to the sports drinks and running shoes you buy.
Recent Facebook stats show a dramatic increase in younger (18-24) and older generation (over 55+). Yes, you can argue the grandparents signing up to see their grandchildren on the major cause of this increase. Facebook’s greatest asset is photo, video and URL sharing.
The world has changed the way business and consumers make purchasing decisions. Why? Because marketing is about building trust, relevancy, and most importantly, influence. Ask yourself why you bought that iPhone or iPad in the first place? Was it an ad on TV or a website, or did someone show you how cool and sexy it was?
Now, the Hard Part
The biggest task for any organization is determining the impact of any campaign. There is no Nielson ratings for what the customers are saying, or the potential influence one has.
It’s easy to track the effectiveness of an Google AdWords campaign, with keywords, clicks and conversions, but social media is a different beast.
Years ago, I recall a story when ex-Beatle Paul McCartney was in Montreal and denied entrance to a restaurant because he didn’t have a suit or dinner jacket! Can you imagine if this happened today, and that famous person (or person with major influence) picked up their smartphone and Twittered this embarrassing moment?
The three most important concepts for social media implementation is monitoring, measuring and most importantly, engagement.
At the last Dreamforce 2010 User conference (part of Salesforce.com), I spent a lot of time in the Expo Cloud analyzing this trend, and the only company that was clearly the winner in this category was Radian6.
The 2 biggest reasons to use an enterprise software (preferable a cloud based one) is tracking the customer service complaints and the following the competition.
Everyone knows the Twitter and Comcast story (and their #comcastcares hash tag) on how Comcast actively went to the user to solve a complaint, before the user had a chance to complain directly to the Comcast service desk. Customers don’t complain to the vendor, they complain to their friends and peers first. And that’s why you should care about people-to-people or P2P Marketing.
Radian6 was the only vendor on the floor that was able to demonstrate the effectiveness of influence based on monitoring and measuring the social media activity. It’s up to you to engage the customer and help rebrand the user experience.
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About Jimson Lee
Jimson is a freelance industry analyst, with over 25 years experience in the IT industry. Prior to joining CRMHelpDeskSoftware, he spent 4 years as a Senior Consultant at Sierra Systems Group, part of Golden Gate Capital, a leading private equity firm with $9 billion in capital under management. Jimson currently resides in Rome, Italy.
Great point Jimson. In today’s economy the value of people talking to people has a huge value that it may not have before the high adaptation of the internet. People can now broadcast any message of their own and have the potential to be seen by anyone else with an internet connection. Monitoring these conversations on the internet should be a must for any company. By doing it you can stay on top of what is being said about your brand and have the opportunity to react almost in real time before something negative may get out of hand. And of course, as you mention, the price of doing this is much less than buying an ad during the Superbowl, so almost any company can do this.
Cheers,
Sheldon, community manager for Sysomos